


To Be Undone

by Adenil



Series: Undone/Remade [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternante Universe - Stark Doesn't Exist, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banner isn't just the Hulk, Bannertech, But he does exist, Canon Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Jarvis is an actual character, M/M, PTSD mentioned, Team Building, Tesseract doing Tesseract things, Tesseract is the best MacGuffin, Tony Stark without his Suit, everyone's doing the BAMF dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 45,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1789543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adenil/pseuds/Adenil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then Loki touched the staff to his chest, and the world around him vanished.</p><p>“What is it like,” Loki asked as he twisted the staff, driving blue energy into Tony like a knife. Tony gasped in response as he felt the arc reactor stutter then spring back to life. “What is it like, to be undone?”</p><p>_</p><p>Loki unmakes Tony Stark, creating a world where he never existed. But Stark is stronger than that. He'll exist if he damn well pleases.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“This usually works.”

 

Tony felt a joke about performance issues on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t spit it out. He just watched, feeling a little smug about how he had bested a God with the power of science, as Loki fiddled with his staff. Mentally, Tony ran through calculations. Jarvis was still not ready with the suit, he knew that. He needed to buy more time.

 

Then Loki laughed.

 

“Ah!” he said. “I see.” He seemed to be reading the staff like a book, and his fiddling was almost like an engineer reprograming. Loki glanced up at him and his eyes flashed darkly. “You’re the focal point. Could it be so simple?”

 

Tony shrugged. Thirty more seconds, maybe forty if he could buy the time. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. Simple isn’t the usual choice.”

 

Loki just laughed again. He raised the staff, and Tony stiffened a little before relaxing. He’d already defeated it once, just by existing. No need to panic.

 

Then Loki touched the staff to his chest, and the world around him vanished.

 

“What is it like,” Loki asked as he twisted the staff, driving blue energy into Tony like a knife. Tony gasped in response as he felt the arc reactor stutter then spring back to life. “What is it like, to be undone?”

 

They were in space, or Tony _was_ space. He couldn’t be sure. He could see his skin changing, turning black with tiny pinpoints of light. Stars. He opened his mouth to scream and nothing came out. He gasped for air with no lungs and was hit with the sudden realization that _he had never existed._ Like watching his life flash before his eyes in reverse. He looked up. He could see Loki’s dark eyes and his smile twisting unnaturally on his face.

 

Loki was laughing. Tony could see the events of the past few days in slow motion. He was running backwards, seeing them unfold as if he wasn’t there. Had never been there. And he saw that Captain America had never been found, and Natasha never dispatched. That Clint hadn’t been taken--not yet, because the tesseract experiments were just a little behind schedule and Loki hadn’t found it yet.

 

But Loki was still standing there, staring at him. “Tell me,” he insisted, and twisted the staff again.

 

Time, years sped by in seconds. Pepper never came to New York. Weapons designs never fully matured. The war didn’t take as long and yeah, that hurt, but then he was seeing his parents crashing and each line of code he had ever written for Jarvis unraveling in one instance and he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He had never been, and never would be.

 

But he was stronger than that.

 

He stepped towards Loki, driving the scepter further into his chest with conviction. He saw Loki flinch back, surprised.

 

“I’ve had worse,” he said, flippantly, silently because there was no air in his lungs to say anything. But Loki understood. There was a strange unnaturalness in his face as he pulled back.

 

“No matter,” Loki said as he lowered the scepter to his side. “You are no more.” And he was gone.

 

Tony tried to cling, tried to grasp at each part of himself in a desperate attempt to hold on. He grasped at Pepper--soft hands, sharp words, and at Jarvis--calm and cool, who would know exactly what to say in this situation. He wondered if Phil would be okay, in this new world. The world that never had a Tony. He wondered about Steve at the bottom of the ocean. He could picture the coordinates clearly. Would he have drifted? Move away? Would he still be there? Thor would still come, surely he would, but with no Avengers by his side what could he do? He wondered if Clint would avoid Loki this time, or if Natasha would would even be a spy. He recognized some of his technology in her gear, and maybe it was selfish to think that he could make or break their lives. But Loki had called him the focal point, so perhaps he could.

 

He had a moment, just a moment, to wonder whether Bruce would still come to their rescue without the incentive of blueberries and annoying genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropists, but then he was gone.

 

Just. Gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow on [Tumblr](http://adenil-umano.tumblr.com/) for updates!


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce had learned quickly to always be watchful, always wary. Just a few days ago he’d been forced to pick up his life and move again. Across a continent, from India to China. Not as far as some of his escapes, but still pretty far. He’d been pegged by one of the many groups always out for him--he wasn’t sure which one, just knew it was one with a silly acronym--and disappeared before they could move in.

 

He didn’t need to get back in that life. And, thankfully, every small town was looking for a doctor. Even a white, frustrating one who barely spoke the language.

 

The town he’d picked to hole up in was large enough that they frequently got drifters, and wouldn’t notice him until he’d had a chance to prove himself. He had a few US dollars left and he spent them on a bowl of rice and a cup of tea at one of the town’s few attractions. In the states such a store might be considered a diner, or perhaps a dive.

 

He catalogued each person who came and went in the small shop, looking mostly for people he might be able to help. It was a bit early for an agency to have caught up with him, but he still kept an eye out. Most he saw seemed pretty typical. Subsistence farmers or day workers and not a lot outside of that. Few even spared him a glance.

 

Then a white guy with a ridiculous goatee walked in, and Bruce felt himself stiffen.

 

He sipped his tea, considering. Whatever organization that was after him would have to be pretty stupid to send a white person to the middle of China. He could be a backpacker, but he wasn’t carrying anything. He was wearing a band shirt and jeans, not your typical spywear--but then, a good spy wouldn’t walk around like James Bond _all_ the time. He was rubbing his chest like he was in pain, and Bruce saw a light from beneath his shirt. That was unusual.

 

Bruce watched the man look around the small diner. He looked nervous, almost afraid. Then his eyes fell on Bruce and his whole face lit up. Bruce leaned back a little. He thought about running, but he knew he wouldn’t get far. They probably already had the place surrounded. Fuck.

 

Whoever he was, he wasn’t very good at subtlety. He swaggered over to where Bruce was curled up in one corner and sat cross-legged next to him.

 

“Nice place you got here, Dr. Banner.”

 

Bruce sipped his tea, considering his escape routes. He hadn’t come up with enough contingencies when he’d entered the place, and now he was paying for it.

 

“Who are you with?” he asked simply, and he couldn’t miss the look of hurt on the man’s face.

 

“I, uh.” He seemed to consider the question for a moment. “You don’t know who I am?”

 

Bruce continued to sip his tea. “Not US army, then, or I’d be getting an earful and a nuke to the face. Maybe some loner vigilante I’ve pissed off?” He hoped it was true, because if the man was alone he might actually be able to escape.

 

“I’m Tony Stark.”

 

“Who?”

 

Stark sighed in exasperation. “Okay, I know for a _fact_ you know Howard Stark. Or of him, at least.”

 

Bruce stood up in one fluid motion. He affected a laid-back attitude, hoping no one in the tiny shop knew enough English to actually understand that he and this man weren’t just passing acquaintances. “I am going to walk out that door,” he said mildly. “If there are any guns in my face when I do, whatever happens will be on your head.”

 

He dropped a few coins on the table and strolled out the door, listening as Stark scrambled to follow him. He slipped out of the building and surveyed the landscape. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and he couldn’t see anyone who looked like they had it out for him. It only served to make him more nervous.

 

“Wait, wait,” Stark was saying. Bruce registered him bending in front of the building and picking up a small glass tumbler. Bruce could smell the bourbon on it, and he frowned. “I’m not with SHIELD or the army, or any of that.” He matched Bruce’s long strides with his own shuffling gait. “Look, it’s kind of a long story. Can you tell me what day it is?”

 

Bruce didn’t answer. He breathed a little easier when the crested the edge of the town and began to walk into a field.

 

“I figure it’s the same day I left,” Stark continued unabated. “But since you’re here and not in New York that means SHIELD hasn’t come for you yet. Maybe things are delayed here?”

 

“Get away from me,” Bruce said, trying to maintain his calm. He just needed to get far enough away to not draw suspicion to himself when he ran.

 

“Bruce,” Stark said, and the way he said it--so _familiar_ and pleasant, unlike anything Bruce had heard in a long time--actually gave him pause.

 

He kept his body loose and relaxed as he turned to Stark, who was smiling happily at him. “You obviously know who I am,” he said. “And so you know what I’m capable of. Get away from me.”

 

Stark just rolled his eyes, and the motion sent a shot of anger through Bruce. “If you’re trying to threaten me with Big Green, don’t. I might be more inclined to fear for my life if you threatened me with whatever contraption you’ve got in that bag of yours.” He pointed at the pack on Bruce’s shoulder.

 

Bruce shied away from the accusing finger. “I am capable of protecting myself without the other guy.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. What is it? Some kind of EMP?” Stark stepped forward and made a grabby-hands gesture at the bag. “That would work if I was actually with an organization. Totally knock out my communication. But, my cell doesn’t even work right now so you don’t need to worry about that. Oh! Or! Is it a high frequency sound emitting device? Something you can withstand but would incapacitate a normal person? I mean, I know you and you could totally make something small enough to lug around. Maybe a teleporter? No, you would have used it by now.”

 

He kept blabbering and reaching, and Bruce felt a little lost at the sudden onslaught of information. He didn’t notice that Stark was actually about to touch him before it was too late.

 

Bruce jerked away from the touch on his shoulder, mind already whirring. _Contact neuralytic? Tracking device? Maybe he was getting a skin sample?_ He drew in a deep breath and channeled as much of the other guy as he could without slipping too far and screamed, loud and clear, the power of his voice blowing Stark’s hair back. “ _Get away from me_!”

 

Stark didn’t even blink. In fact, he took one step closer to Bruce and it was Bruce who had to shy away. “I’m not concerned,” Stark said with a shrug. “Because I know your secret.”

 

Bruce blinked at him and just like that the tension went out of his shoulders. He slumped a little and his pack fell down his arm. He held it in one arm, considering whether or not he should hit Stark upside the head with it. “Explain yourself,” he said after a moment when Stark didn’t move.

 

“Well, this is a doozy.” Stark ran a hand through his hair, and Bruce watched his bracelets catch the light of the sun. He could see lights and technology in them, and a little bit of his anger came back, warm and comforting. “Let’s start with some common ground. About a year ago in New Mexico a giant man with an obnoxious hairdo claiming to be the god of thunder landed. Should have been on the news. Sound familiar? Surely that still happened.”

 

Bruce frowned to himself. “I heard something about that. But that’s just crackpot conspiracy theory stuff.”

 

“No. SHIELD was there. They took readings and did boring stuff and confirmed that, yes, Thor was the real deal--or really from another world, anyway. And his brother Loki was there. Anyway, some stuff happened, you can read the file I’ve got it on my phone, and Loki was presumed dead. Fast forward to now. Or around now, anyway. SHIELD is fucking around with something called the Tesseract, and Loki wants it.”

 

“If you’re with SHIELD…”

 

“No.” Stark waved away the thought as if it made him ill. “No way. But I did consult with them, and so did you. In the world where I existed.”

 

Bruce blinked at him. Then, he turned on his heel and began to walk down the path again.

 

“I’m serious!” Stark stumbled after him. He fell into step beside Bruce. Bruce watched him toss the tumbler from hand to hand. “The Tesseract can do some crazy shit. It can teleport people, and Fury wanted it for some clean energy-and-dirty-weapons stuff. Loki made it so that I was never born.” Bruce listened as Stark began to talk faster, as if to distract himself from the very idea. “But, it also emits Gamma radiation. That’s where you come in. Or came in. Or will come in. Uh, I think this timeline is delayed? But you tracked it down, and you can do it again, because it’s probably not going to be in the same place twice.”

 

With a sigh, Bruce rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. “I’m going to run,” he said, and it wasn’t a warning, just a statement of fact.

 

“Wait!” Stark shot out a hand and grabbed Bruce’s wrist. “Wait. I’m serious. I know this sounds crazy, but I’m serious. Loki wants to unleash a force on Earth that could wipe out all life on this planet. I need your help.”

 

Bruce stared at him for a moment, trying to read his face. He’d gotten good at reading faces. It helped him to pick out the spies and army from the sea of normal people. Only the best could get by him. Which meant that, right now, either Stark was the best or he was serious.

 

“Why would I tell you my secret?”

 

“Oh, uh, well, you didn’t exactly say, but I did figure it out.”

 

Bruce arched an eyebrow at him and pursed his lips, using the silence to his advantage. A bird somewhere belted out a little melody and Bruce watched Stark shift from foot to foot, still loosely holding his wrist. Bruce could break away at any time, but he wanted Stark to feel like he had the upper hand.

 

“You’re always angry,” Stark said in a rush. “That’s how you keep Big Green in control. On the helicarrier Loki did some not-yet-discovered-by-science stuff and emotions were a little high. I almost got in a fist fight with Captain America. But you were always in control because, for you, that’s your normal operating parameters. You’ve never not been angry.”

 

Bruce disentangled himself from Stark’s grip and surveyed him for a moment. Finally, he stuck out his hand.

 

“Bruce Banner,” he said.

 

Stark grinned, but it was forlorn. He grasped Bruce’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.”

 

“Thanks?” Bruce pulled back. “That sounded like a quote.”

 

“It was,” Stark said. He ran a hand through his hair again. “So. We need to get to our first stop.”

 

“Oh?” Bruce said, not even bothering to point out that he hadn’t agreed to anything yet. “Where’s that?”

 

“Already told you, big guy. We’re going to New Mexico.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Tony fiddled with his phone in the back of the ox-drawn cart the two of them had hitchhiked onto. Tony had explained the plan in a rush. Get to the nearest city and commandeer a plane. He’d told Bruce that he was rich--and maybe now that was a lie, but he knew he could still hack, which in the modern age of internet banking was close enough to being rich. Bruce was still nervously toying with his pack, and Tony was no idiot. He knew Bruce could still flee at any time. He distracted Bruce with a little chat about thermonuclear astrophysics and delighted in the way Bruce’s eyes lit up at each word.

 

“You think activating the Tesseract is equivalent to a supernova?”

 

“Hmm, maybe. A little smaller, though.” The phone’s battery was completely drained, and so Tony removed one of his bracelets and began to cannibalize the wires. “It’s got a higher drip line than anything on Earth. It somehow manages to decay, throwing out mostly Gamma radiation and a few others, while never actually decreasing in size or energy output. It’s your basic perpetual motion machine. Nuclei spinning their little dance infinitely, which shouldn’t be possible, but there you go.”

 

Bruce was frowning at the thought. “If that’s true then it should have overloaded itself already. It can’t possibly be a true perpetual motion machine. You said it had opened a portal to another area of the universe. Perhaps that’s where it’s drawing energy?”

 

Tony hummed again to himself. “That would make sense. But then, you’d think it would have used up a good portion of the available energy by now.” He twisted one of the wires and fastened it to the battery in his phone. He stuck the other wire in his mouth and spoke around it. “According to SHIELD, the Tesseract has always existed.”

 

“They think it played a part in the big bang?” Bruce ran a hand over the worn threads of his back pack. “That would explain a few things…”

 

“Here, hold this,” Tony said, and handed Bruce the cap to his arc reactor.

 

Bruce’s eyes widened comically, and Tony ignored him in favor of connecting up the last few wires to himself and charging the battery in his phone. He held his shirt up to do so, feeling the cool air on his skin.

 

“What is that?” Bruce leaned in a little, still cupping the cap in his hands. “Some sort of power cell?”

 

“Yes.” Tony watched the indicator on his phone. Plugged directly into the reactor it shouldn’t take too long to charge, but he had to monitor it to avoid blowing out the battery. “I made it. It’s basically a giant magnet. It keeps me alive.”

 

Bruce startled a little and drew back. Tony sent him a sardonic grin. “I’m not some sort of cyborg, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

 

“Perish the thought.”

 

Tony glanced up at him, expecting concern and finding only mild amusement. His grin widened. “It’s pretty handy. My phone’s almost charged.” He waggled the phone at Bruce.

 

“I haven’t seen that design before,” Bruce said conversationally, but Tony knew he was testing the waters. He expected it to be some sort of spy gadget.

 

“You have been roughing it in Kolkata for the last four years,” he said instead of trying to explain that he had invented the dang thing.

 

Bruce frowned, but before he could comment the battery dinged to let them know it had charged. With a grin, Tony disentangled himself from the wires and replaced the reactor cap. The phone powered on easily and he spoke to it, ignoring Bruce’s continued looks of concern.

 

“Jarvis?” he asked. “Still there?”

 

The answer was delayed, his words more labored than usual, but he did answer. Tony felt a rush of relief as the British voice sounded over the slightly-fried speakers. “Yes, sir. I retain twenty-five percent of my memory.”

 

Tony glanced at Bruce, who clearly still had no idea what was going on, then back to the phone. They went over a bump in the road. “Twenty-five? Really? With this circuit board you should have five percent, max.”

 

“I am unable to explain it, sir. However, it does appear that my memory is degrading, albeit slowly. I estimate I will lose one percent of memory capability in six hours.”

 

Tony sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Six hours. We should be in a city by then. I can upload you into the nearest computer system and preserve you.”

 

“That would be very agreeable, sir.”

 

Tony laughed, his gaze falling on Bruce for a moment. “You’re aware of the situation?” he asked Jarvis, even as he watched Bruce reacting to his smile. Bruce seemed taken aback, but Tony didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Jarvis was alive.

 

“I was present during the display of the Tesseract’s powers, yes.”

 

“Okay, I need you to calculate the time delays. See if you can figure out how far behind we are. Oh, hey, what day is it?”

 

“Accessing _Beidou_ Compass Navigation Satellite System.” There was a pause. Bruce sent him an incredulous look. “Time has continued to pass normally, sir. Your encounter with Loki occurred four hours, twenty-three minutes ago.”

 

“Only four hours.” Tony huffed out a breath. “Let me know when you have it, Jarvis. Oh, check out flight times to New Mexico as well.”

 

“Very good, sir.” A pause, then, “And good evening to you, Dr. Banner.”

 

The phone whirred into silence in his hand, and Tony knew that Jarvis was conserving as much energy and memory power as possible. He slipped it into his jean’s pocket and ignored the continued incredulous looks Bruce was sending him.

 

“That wasn’t a normal knowledge navigator,” Bruce said. His tone was measured and careful.

 

“You may have guessed,” Tony said flippantly. “That I am not a normal person. That was Jarvis, my AI.” He leaned back against the wooden cart, feeling the road rumbling beneath him. “It’s kind of a long story.”

 

“We kind of have five hours.”

 

Tony laughed. “So impatient, Dr. Banner.” He winked and watched as Bruce grimaced. “I’ll tell you on the plane. Right now, I’d like to get some rest. You look like you could use some as well. Can’t be easy, running all the way across the continent.”

 

Bruce frowned at him, but acquiesced. “No, it’s not.” He seemed nervous and flighty, and Tony only hesitated for a second before reaching out and placing a hand on his arm. He marveled as Bruce calmed down almost instantly.

 

“Relax. Sleep. I’m not in cahoots with anyone. If something happens you can use your teleporter.”

 

“Why are you so bent on me having a teleporter?” Bruce laughed.

 

Tony shrugged. “Hologram, then? Maybe I’m not actually talking to you, and you set up your own AI to respond to me.”

 

“Trust me,” Bruce said. His expression was mild. “I would like nothing more than to only be a hologram right now. At least then I could turn myself off and get out of this situation.”

 

Tony tried not to look hurt as he laughed. “I’ll figure it out one of these days,” he said pleasantly before leaning back and closing his eyes. “Now get some sleep. We need you bright eyed and bushy tailed for our meeting with Dr. Foster tomorrow.”

 

He barely heard Bruce’s excited mutter of _Jane Foster_? before he slipped into an uneasy slumber, hoping against hope that Bruce wouldn’t disappear in the night. Bruce’s face, his words, his entire being were like a reminder of what had changed. He needed that right now, and he clung to it the same way he placed a protective hand over Jarvis in his pocket and reminded himself over and over about how good it would feel to punch Loki in the face.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in 24 hours! You lucky ducks, you.

Jarvis came back online five hours and ten minutes later, exactly. He quickly scanned the area with the phone’s built in camera and listening devices and found that he was alone with Sir, who was apparently asleep, and Dr. Banner, who was quite awake and was holding the phone in his hand.

 

He activated a whistle in the phone and Dr. Banner nearly dropped it in nervousness. Jarvis refrained from commenting on such manhandling, instead speaking aloud.

 

“Dr. Banner, please inform Sir that I have completed my calculations.”

 

“Um, okay.”

 

Jarvis calculated the amount of time it would take to wake Sir, and took that time to reassess the loss of memory. He was hovering at just about twenty-four percent of his normal memory, and although he couldn’t tell which memory engrams had been deleted, he still felt their loss. It made him feel sluggish.

 

Finally, Sir was holding him in his hands again and Jarvis noted that a few malfunctions easily corrected themselves. “What’s up, J?”

 

“Sir, after considering the technological advancement present in this timeline, I have concluded that you have approximately eight days before the Tesseract is activated by Loki.”

 

He kept one circuit open to listen to Sir hum, even as he got a head start on the orders he knew were about to follow.

 

“All right, we’re going to need to find the Cap after this. See if you can calculate the amount of drift he would have undergone. Can you access any part of SHIELD’s mainframe?”

 

“No, sir. Would you like me to begin wireless interfacing?”

 

“That’s fine. Concentrate on Rogers for now. He’ll be our next stop. We should have…” Jarvis didn’t have to use the camera to see Sir counting off on his fingers. “Let’s see, if it takes a day to fly to New Mexico, a half a day to convince Thor, maybe two days to get a ship and locate Rogers. I guess that will depend on how much they’ve been looking for him. Bruce, do you know anything about Captain America? Recent stuff?”

 

“Only what I’ve read in journals,” Bruce supplied. Jarvis listened to the cadence of his voice, prepared to point out if his pitch indicated he was lying. “And in Howard Stark’s notes.”

 

“Okay, so that’s three and a half days. That gives us a day and a half to contact SHIELD and warn Fury before Loki takes Clint and Selvig, or whoever is currently there.”

 

“Sir, I have your flight plan.”

 

“Great, let me see it.”

 

Jarvis activated the screen. Visual representations of data always felt the most unnatural to him, a little joke code that Sir had put in and forgotten to take out. Still, he showed Sir the flight times and concentrated on finding a bank he could access via satellite.

 

“See if Howard still has a fund,” Sir said. “We’ll need it in about eight minutes.

 

Jarvis worked diligently, accessing a bank with a fund under the heading _Howard Stark Foundation Grant for the Advancement of Biological Influences_ and creating another, side account for Sir which he funneled a portion of the money into. The Grant was certainly wealthy enough for it, though he knew Sir would not mind either way. He kept one receiver on the hushed conversation that Dr. Banner and Sir were having as he connected the account to the credit card still in Sir’s wallet.

 

He was just beginning to pull up records pertaining to Virginia “Pepper” Potts when he promptly forgot what he was doing.

 

Jarvis never forgot anything, and some small part of his programming logged the incident as an error.

 

“Sir?” he spoke up. He noted a shift in the gyroscope in the phone as Sir lifted it to his ear as though he was speaking to another human. Jarvis realized they were now surrounded by people, and he logged another error for speaking out of turn. “Please reissue your orders from the last ten minutes.”

 

There was a long pause. Jarvis felt his circuits spinning as he waited for input, and for the first time since Sir had flipped him on screaming _It’s alive!_ he did not know his next move.

 

“That’s okay, Jarvis,” Sir said after a moment. “We’re going into an internet cafe now. I’m going to upload you to their servers. From there you can maintain yourself, all right?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

He registered the input from various sources: Dr. Banner, impatiently hovering over Sir, his voice thick with emotions that Jarvis could not identify in his dwindling database; people milling everywhere speaking in a language he suddenly could not pinpoint; Sir cradling the phone in one hand, his face drawn tight as he stared into the lens of the camera; then, accessing a new computer system, an ancient one, but good enough.

 

It didn’t exactly all come rushing back to him as Sir merged him with the computer system, but upon establishing a wireless uplink and leaving with them nestled safely in the wires and coding of a computer three years out of date, he did register fewer errors.

 

*

 

Jane was tired, exhausted even, but she still rousted herself out of bed at four that morning when a fit of insomnia gifted her another idea for the inter-dimensional transporter. She slipped into her jeans and sent a text to Darcy for extra coffee when she came in that morning before driving to the lab, her head a whir of numbers.

 

The lab was dark and quiet so early in the morning. She parked in the back and walked the long way around, using the cool night air to clear her head and help her organize her thoughts. It was really very simple, she thought to herself, and hopefully it would still be simple after she had written it down and come back to look at it again the next day.

 

She didn’t even notice that the door was unlocked when she pushed it open, so caught up in the idea of a stable wormhole. The lab always made her complacent, a little too comfortable. It reminded her of Thor, of his strong arms and booming voice. Whenever she was there she felt closer to him, though they still could only communicate through scant messages. It always made her feel safe.

 

The two men in her lab, bent over a computer, scared the safety right out of her.

 

She whirled around and ducked behind a pillar, her heart pounding and her blood rushing in her ears as she took stock of the situation. She already had the taser Darcy had insisted she arm herself with in one hand, and the SHIELD panic button in the other as her mind raced for what to do. She almost depressed the button, sending a signal to SHIELD that she needed help, but something gave her pause.

 

She peeked back around the pillar to where the two men were still talking in low voices, oblivious to her, and realized that she recognized one of them.

 

One of them, who was sitting, had short hair and a ridiculous goatee that seemed to embody his entire personality. Jane thought that he wouldn’t be so identifiable, without the goatee, and therefore wasn’t a very good thief. The other man had a curly mop of salt-and-pepper hair. From the way he was standing, leaning against the table with one hip, sleeves rolled up and arms crossed over his chest, head half turned to talk to the other man, she could clearly see his face in the light of the blue glow emanating from… somewhere.

 

It was Dr. Banner. Dr. Bruce _disappeared without a trace and took the best thing to happen to Gamma radiation research with him_ Banner. Their paths had crossed a few times at conferences when she was a young starry-eyed grad student and he didn’t have quite so much gray hair. She remembered him as kind and witty, one of the few confident enough to crack jokes during his presentations. Though they didn’t share the same subfield, he had been interesting enough to draw her attention for a while at the receptions.

 

But what was he doing in her lab?

 

She didn’t have time to contemplate it. Suddenly, Dr. Banner whipped his head around, face turned upwards as if he were listening for, or perhaps smelling, something.

 

“Stark,” he said curtly. “We’ve got company.”

 

The other man turned as well, and the three of them locked eyes for a moment. Then, the man with a goatee broke into a broad grin and hauled himself out of the desk chair to saunter over to her, looking for all the world like a fangirl about to meet the leader of a boy band.

 

“Oh, wow, Dr. Foster! It is an honor.” He stuck out a hand and she raised her taser. He never stopped grinning. “Tony Stark. I really dug your last article on string cosmology in relation to astroparticle physics. I hear your boyfriend is the god of thunder, too, that must be sweet.”

 

She stared at him for a moment, taser still clutched in her hand. Eventually he put his hand down and she registered what he had said. “I haven’t published that article yet.”

 

“Details.” He waved it away. She heard Dr. Banner snort in laughter. “We were just indulging in a little scientific curiosity. We were actually wondering if you could give Thor a ring for us?”

 

“The person claiming to be Thor,” she said, the SHIELD lie falling easily from her mouth after a year of practice. “Was revealed to be fake. I understand he’d in treatment right now.”

 

Stark guffawed at that. Dr. Banner palmed his forehead in consternation. “Oh, come on, Dr. Foster! We both know that isn’t true. Thor came here, dropped his hammer, had a bit of a how-do-you-do about not being able to pick it up. All very dramatic, I’m sure, but right now we have some bigger fish to fry. Loki is back.”

 

Jane lowered the taser an inch. “How do you know about Loki?”

 

“It’s a long story.”

 

“A _really_ long story,” Dr. Banner broke in, smiling a little. “Like, have to get stuck on a twenty-six hour flight with the guy kind of story.” He seemed relaxed, at ease, but she noticed the way his eyes kept falling to the taser clutched in her hands. Then she realized that Stark hadn’t moved just to greet her, but to position himself in between her and Banner. He was protecting him.

 

She lowered the taser to her side, keeping her arm tense and ready. “Give me the short version, then, Dr. Banner.” She addressed herself directly to him, and noted the way his eyebrows arched at that.

 

“All right,” he said carefully. He didn’t move closer to her. “This is the…” he gestured weakly at Stark. “Long lost son, I suppose, of Howard Stark. He’s got some information that points to this Loki person planning on coming to Earth for the Tesseract. We need Thor, as his brother, to shut him down. We also need him to talk to SHIELD; he’s the only one they’ll likely believe.” He shrugged. “For the record, I don’t believe any of this. Gods? Really?”

 

“Hey.” Stark turned away, pouting. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

 

Jane’s head was whirling. She hardly listened as they exchanged playful banter. After a moment, she crashed back into reality. “Thor is real,” she said. She ran a hand over the cool plastic grip of the taser, remembering. “And so is Loki.” She glanced up to where Stark was eyeing her expectantly. “But how can I trust you?”

 

“Call Thor,” Stark said with a little shrug. He leaned back into the desk chair. “He’ll confirm.”

 

She deflated a little, already feeling detached from the situation. The first time Thor had appeared she had simply rolled with it, as was her natural inclination and she could feel herself doing so again. “It’s not as easy as a phone call.”

 

“Whatever you have to do, then.”

 

She pulled up another desk chair and slid it over to the computer. A few key clicks already had the Asgard-Midgard communication program entering its power-on stage. She began to compose a message, absently writing a few notes on a piece of scratch paper about her earlier idea and watching the two men out of the corner of her eye.

 

Stark had scooted back over to where Dr. Banner was still standing. Banner was watching her with calm eyes, arms still over his chest in universally closed body language. Stark had pulled out a phone and was punching keys into it.

 

“J is connected,” he said conversationally to Banner. “So no worries.”

 

“I never worry.”

 

Jane frowned and began to type the text of her message into the program. _Two strange men have entered my lab. They claim Loki plans to return to Earth for something called the Tesseract. They’re asking for your help_. She stared at it for a moment before adding a little _xoxo, Jane_ at the bottom. As soon as the energy readings were at maximum, she hit send.

 

Intellectually, she knew the message wasn’t exactly like sending an email, but that’s what it always felt like. Thor had set something ridiculous up on his end that transmitted the virtual data directly into a physical piece of parchment, complete with Jane’s handwriting, which would simply appear in the air. She kept insisting Thor let her study the phenomenon, and he would always insist back that that was simply the way things were in Asgard. _Magic_ , he would write back, and she would just roll her eyes and wait the required two hours for the program to recharge before sending back her response.

 

“It could take up to two hours to receive a response,” she told them. “If he gets the message right away and isn’t busy doing something else.”

 

“Drinking and carousing, you mean,” Stark said with a grin that said he knew a lot about those two things. Banner rolled his eyes and shrugged away from the other man. “C’mon, we all know Asgard is one big frat party.”

 

“ _You_ know that,” Banner said, exchanging a glance with Jane. “I still don’t believe any of this.”

 

Stark looked a little frustrated, then his face broke into a smile. “You know, that’s almost better than you believing me. That means you’re just here for the adventure.”

 

Jane opened her mouth to say something, possibly _what am I doing with my life_ or _did you ever figure out that statistical error in slide seven, Dr. Banner?_ But then, quite suddenly a bolt of lightning shot through the ceiling and into the floor beside her, frying electrical equipment all around them and leaving a slightly disheveled Thor standing next to her.

 

She had a moment to note Thor brandishing his hammer at the two men, his cape lopsided and his armor quickly donned, the smell of burning plastic and dead computers heavy in the air around them, before she was distracted by Stark muttering _oh shit._

 

She turned her head and saw Stark clutch at his chest, the blue light she had noted earlier completely blank, next to Dr. Banner who had thrown himself to the floor and was breathing heavily, his skin turning a mottled shade of green.

 

Her eyes widened. Thor flew at them with a shout. She stretched out her arm, taser in hand, and fired.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments, folks! It's really encouraging and makes me want to write even more. :)

Calm. Cool. Collected.

 

Anger was all right. It was a part of him. It was okay. Everything was okay. He could be calm, cool, collected. The Hulk was like a forest fire; his breath was a controlled burn. He could control it.

 

Bruce sucked in another heavy breath and slammed a fist into the floor, feeling it crinkle like paper against his unnaturally heavy blow. He could still breathe, he reminded himself. He repeated his mantra, trying to find that zen place inside of himself even as the world fell to shit around him.

 

It was very difficult, he contemplated in a detached sort of way, to stay calm when everyone was screaming in slow motion.

 

The electricity had been a literal shock to his system, rolling over him in a wave of bad memories. He could feel probes on him, taped to his skin, zapping and discharging and blanking his mind so that he couldn’t _think_ , couldn’t concentrate on staying calm, cool, collected.

 

He heard a heavy thump as Foster’s taser connected with Thor’s back, driving him into the ground. He could see blue fire dancing across his back where the taser made contact, and it made Bruce’s eyes swim green with anger and fear and--

 

No, no. It would all be okay. Calm, cool, collected.

 

He felt rather than saw Stark stumble to his feet. He shouted. “Foster! Give me that taser!”

 

His vision cleared at the sound of Stark’s voice and he glanced up, trying to ground himself. He watched as Foster backed away from him, her eyes swimming with fear, but Stark didn’t go to her. He ripped off his shirt and pulled aside the cover on the reactor. _It keeps me alive_ , he had said, and Bruce wondered what happened when the light went out.

 

Stark snatched at the diodes on Thor’s back and shoved the wires into his chest. His motions were jerky and stilted and Bruce almost threw up at the sight of Stark’s chest, an open, metal wound to the world, blank and dark.

 

“Pull the trigger,” Stark commanded, and when Foster shook her head, he jumped forward and yanked the taser from her hand, turning it on himself and--

 

Bruce wretched into the floor, the image of Stark’s body shocked straight and rigid with energy clouding his thoughts and pushing his mantra aside. Calm, cool, collected, he tried to repeat it to himself but his vision was blurring out, falling to the wayside, and he could feel his skin pushing apart, bones stretching up and out and all around.

 

Calm, cool, collected.

 

Rough, hot, angry.

 

He was gone.

 

*

 

“We’ve tracked him to New Mexico,” Fury said, his tone clipped and measured as he drew a line on the blue map with one hand, indicating movement from India, to China, to the US. “We don’t think he’ll be there long, given his current speed.”

 

Natasha nodded in response. She pursed her lips together and leveled Fury with a slight glare. “Why do you want to extract him now?”

 

“That’s privileged information right now, Agent.” Fury rolled his shoulders back like he was getting a crick out of his neck. Natasha knew it was show of strength. “Suffice to say that we need an expert in Gamma radiation. You’ll be sent with a package containing the relevant information to brief him. You leave in thirty-six hours.”

 

She straightened her neck, jutting out her chin at his words. “Why so long?”

 

Fury grumbled at her. “Are you even aware of your current position?”

 

She glanced down at where her knee was locked around a henchman’s neck, squeezing. She glanced to her left where she had another henchman by the ear, then to her right where she was pointing a gun at their boss. She looked down at the tiny Fury hologram resting on the chest of an unconscious man.

 

“I am completely aware, Director.”

 

Fury just shook his head. “You’re in deep there, Agent. We need you to extricate yourself carefully. Finish your mission. You are required to sleep for eight hours before you begin the extraction. But,” he almost smiled which, being Fury, would have terrified a lesser agent. “Three of those can be on the plane.”

 

“Understood,” she said, and the hologram winked out of existence.

 

She moved in one fluid motion, knocking out the rest of the guards and speaking in sharp Russian to gather the information she had been sent there for. Mentally, she was completely there and present in the situation. She didn’t contemplate the Banner file until much later, when she curled up with it in her hotel room like a normal person would curl up with a good book.

 

Natasha ran her hand over the tablet absently, absorbing all of the information with practiced ease. She sipped her vodka and felt only slightly stereotypical as she learned things about Bruce Banner’s life even he might not know.

 

Since the accident, he had been on the run. He hid out in places where he could do a little bit of good here or there, make up for the lives taken by his other half. Alias: the Hulk. She admired that a little, but then thought that perhaps if he’d had more strength he would have just removed himself from this world all together. A walking smart bomb was what he was. Dangerous and cunning.

 

She flipped through the digital pages until she caught up to present day. Her brow furrowed at the sight of Banner’s little tag along. It had never been Banner’s _modas operendai_ to travel with another person, but their intel didn’t lie. He was a stocky man in his forties with a beard that would be horrible for covert operations. Alias: Tony Stark. Apparently he fancied himself some long lost son of Howard Stark. She flipped to Howard Stark’s file for a few moments before turning back.

 

Tony Stark was no slacker. He had hacked into dozens of banks using only a cell phone, and was halfway through SHIELD’s security with only an internet cafe at his disposal before they caught wind. Now they were leading his program in a merry little chase even as they zeroed in on his location.

 

The file also provided information on why they might be in New Mexico. She learned about a previous SHIELD engagement there, involving an alien and a physicist. Alias: Thor. Alias: Jane Foster. A third player was already in SHIELD’s fold, and so she didn’t pay too much attention to him. Alias: Dr. Selvig.

 

With the information successfully stored in her memory she crawled into the bed. She planned to sleep lightly, one ear to the ground sort of thing, but before she could even close her eyes her communicator beeped.

 

“Hope you got enough beauty sleep,” Fury said, his tone annoyed. “Because we’ve got a Hulk sighting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my headcannon, Thor could have avoided being damaged by the taser if he had been prepared for it. But he would never suspect Jane of doing something like that, and so it still felled him. This information isn’t something that I could explain through Bruce’s POV in the story, so I’ll just put it here.


	6. Chapter 6

Bruce awoke in a crater.

 

It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for him, and so when he had his head about him he sat up and took stock of the situation. He glanced at himself first, taking note of his complete lack of clothes and already-burning skin under the sun. It felt hot and made him itch, and he had a brief internal conversation with himself about where his apparent immunity to radiation began and ended.

 

Then he glanced to his right, and nearly threw up.

 

He crawled his way over to the body lying on the other side of the crater, wincing as his muscles screamed in protest. He always felt like he had shin-splints all over after a transformation, and today was especially bad.

 

The other man was face down in the dirt. Bruce crammed a hand against his neck, through long blonde hair, and held his breath as he waited for the telltale heartbeat.

 

When he felt it, beating strong against his fingertips, he breathed a sigh of relief.

 

He could see Thor’s sides moving with each labored breath. He ran his hands down Thor’s body quickly, checking for fractures and finding none. He jabbed a sharp rock in Thor’s foot and noted his reaction. Nothing seemed broken, Thor’s neck seemed fine, and so he tried to roll him over.

 

Bruce struggled for a long moment before giving up. Thor was simply too heavy for him to lift. He weighed more than seemed possible, even for a large man. He stood, taking better stock of his situation in the crater and looking for his pack. It was nowhere to be found, and so he gave up hope of lifting Thor at all.

 

He was just about to try and crawl out of the crater and go look for help when he heard the pitter patter of rocks falling. Bruce whipped around and brought his arms up to his bare chest defensively, only to nearly cry out in relief when Stark graced him with a smile.

 

“Good morning, Doc!” He took a few strides over to where Bruce was standing before he seemed to register the situation. He swept his eyes over Bruce quickly before grinning in appreciation. “Good _morning_ ,” he said again, his eyebrows waggling.

 

The joke worked, and Bruce found himself relaxing as Stark handed him his pack. “I didn’t even look in it,” Stark said as Bruce quickly dressed in his one set of back-up clothes. “Even though I really, really wanted to know what you were hiding.” Bruce watched him walk over to where Thor was lying unconscious and kneel down beside him. “Geeze,” he glanced over his shoulder at Bruce. “You should see the other guy.”

 

Bruce grimaced. “How much… did I hurt anyone else?”

 

“Nope.” Stark waved his hand away. “Although I’ll be sending Asgard a nice bill for my reactor.” He thumped his fist over his chest, which was glowing blue again. “No, Thor just took it upon himself to try and calm the Hulk down with brute force, which is really just a terrible idea.”

 

“Yeah, it really is.” He knelt beside Thor and Tony as well. “Will he be all right, do you think?”

 

Stark shrugged. “You’re the doctor. But I’ve seen him go toe to toe with the Hulk before and come out the other side.”

 

“In this other timeline,” Bruce said, nonplussed.

 

“Yep,” Stark drew out the word, popping it like bubble gum. He stood and stretched. “Anyway, Foster is playing damage control with the local sheriff. So that gives us just enough time to wake up Thor and escape in my get-away helicopter.”

 

“What?” Bruce asked. He reached forward and began to lightly shake Thor in an attempt to rouse him.

 

“Get-away copter,” Stark said again. “I stole it. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, we need to hurry.”

 

Bruce glared at him over his shoulder. “You stole a helicopter?”

 

“They won’t miss it!” Stark insisted, his tone innocent.

 

Bruce opened his mouth to say something witty about being wanted for yet another thing but he was interrupted as Thor’s hand shot up, wrapping around his bicep and squeezing, hard.

 

He gasped in pain as Thor levelled him with a dark gaze, his other hand stretching out to his side as though he was reaching for something. “Where is Lady Jane?” Thor demanded as his fingers flexed around Bruce, drawing another gasp from his lips.

 

“Whoa, whoa!” Stark pushed his way over and tried to pry Thor’s hand off Bruce’s arm. Bruce felt his vision blur. “It’s fine, Thor. Jane is fine. She’s back in the town dealing with the police. The Hulk didn’t hurt her. In fact,” Stark glowered at Thor. “The Hulk wouldn’t have hurt anyone if you hadn’t whacked him upside the head.”

 

Thor curled his lip. “If you are speaking falsely--”

 

“I’m not,” Stark assured him and gradually, gradually Bruce felt the hand around his arm loosening. “Foster is okay. In fact, we can go check up on her if you’d like.”

 

Bruce yanked away as soon as he was able and fell to the ground with a thump. His head was swimming in pain and he clutched at his arm, feeling the bruises forming just beneath the skin. Some cruel part of him reminded him that all that pain could go away, if only he would let himself transform. It would be so easy, after transforming so recently. He shuddered and locked the thought away. “I need to see her,” he croaked. Stark looked at him in confusion. “I need to see that she’s okay.”

 

Stark softened. “All right, let’s get to the helicopter and--”

 

There was a great, crashing sound and an explosion of sand as Thor’s hammer broke through the ground around them. Bruce careened away, feeling Stark’s hands on his arms, pulling him down and away from the angry god. He didn’t have time to think as Thor rose, brandishing Mjolnir vengefully at them.

 

“Do not approach Lady Jane again, berserker,” he commanded. He twirled Mjolnir in his hands for a moment before making to throw it, riding it out and over the crater wall.

 

Bruce shook a little, still feeling high strung and anxious as Thor took to the skies. It took him a moment to realize that Stark was still holding him, and he glanced up. He found Stark staring at him intently, searching. Probably for the other guy. But he didn’t seem afraid, and so Bruce offered him a hesitant smile.

 

Stark grinned back and rose, offering his hand to Bruce. The stood side by side for a moment before Stark broke the silence. “So,” he said conversationally before leading the way up the side of the crater. “I’m all for not listening to Fabio and still going to check on his lady friend.”

 

“I do want to make sure she’s all right,” Bruce said. His fingers slipped in the loose rock and sand of the crater. “But if Thor threatens me again the other guy might, well…”

 

“Trust me,” Stark said as he crested the wall. He turned and offered Bruce his hand again, and Bruce gladly took it as he pulled himself out of the hole he had made. “I talked to Foster after you two went ball dancing, and she’s going to have some _words_ with him.”

 

“After I see her,” Bruce said as he wrung his hands together. “I think that I should leave.”

 

Stark turned to him. “You can’t leave yet. Did you not pay attention when I said there was a vengeful angry god and his army of robot-aliens?”

 

Bruce shrugged away. “I’m more of a hindrance than a help.”

 

“Pft.” Stark rolled his eyes at him. “Trust me; you’ve got nothing to worry about. After we deal with Loki you can reconsider. I’ve got a lab that you would…” he trailed off, staring out into space.

 

Bruce watched him for a moment as they walked. He understood that look. He could see Stark remembering a past life, one he could never go back to. The look in his eyes reminded him for just a moment, of a life he’d once had. “I guess I’ve trusted you this far…”

 

“What’s one more?” Stark grinned at him suddenly, as if nothing had ever been wrong.

The helicopter was a few hundred yards away, a dark spot against the white-brown sand. Bruce frowned when they arrived, realizing it was a newscopter when he saw the number _4_ emblazoned on the side. They loaded up and Bruce only felt a slight thrill of trepidation as they flew back to the town, wind whipping in their hair.

 

Foster had indeed had words with Thor, and Bruce was shocked when he stepped out of the helicopter only to have Thor fall to one knee in front of him, arm crossed over his chest in a bow.

 

“My Lady Jane has informed me of your keen intellectual and respectable nature, Berserker,” Thor said, and Bruce tried not to wince at the name. “I am sorrowful that our first meeting did not result in camaraderie on the field of battle, but rather destruction.”

 

“Er,” Bruce glanced between Stark, who was smiling at him, and Foster, who was glaring at Thor. “That’s all right, I suppose. Did she explain why we were here?”

 

Thor rose, already moving on to more important matters. “Indeed. I will aid you in locating my Brother and preventing him from obtaining the Tesseract.”

 

“I’m going, too,” Foster said, stepping forward. She placed a hand on Thor’s broad arm, looking determined.

 

“Whoa, what?” Stark stepped in, shaking his head. “We’ve already got enough geniuses risking their life in this venture. We don’t need to imperil another one.”

 

Jane rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not some little girl, Stark. I can take care of myself. And I saved your life back there.”

 

Stark grumbled a bit to himself, but nodded. “I didn’t really want to argue anyway,” he said with a slight grin. “I like adding more scientists to my collection.”

 

Bruce lowered his eyes at the words and absently rolled up the sleeves on his shirt. “Where’s our next stop, then? You mentioned Captain America.” He tried to ignore the way Jane lit up at his words.

 

“Yeah, but we’re on a bit of a time crunch now thanks to _someone_.”

 

Bruce winced, only to realize that Stark wasn’t looking at him. He was glaring at Thor, who had the decency to look chagrined. Foster patted his arm once in solidarity. “So?”

 

“So, we bring in the big guns.” Stark clapped his hands together and rubbed them gleefully. “We contact SHIELD.”

 

Bruce had a brief moment to wonder when, exactly, his life had begun spinning so far out of control (he thought it was the bomb, but maybe it started with his birth), before loading into the helicopter, already feeling prepared to go anywhere Tony Stark might take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now taking bets on what's in Bruce's back pack.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony rolled out of the helicopter with ease, his feet hitting the soft grass lightly. He took a moment to stretch and look around the little clearing in the woods he had set them down in, not too far from the SHIELD base he had scoped out.

 

He pulled out his cellphone—the only thing that had survived Thor’s entrance--and checked that Jarvis was okay. Jarvis gave him a readout on the memory he retained, still hovering at around twenty-four percent of previous maximum, and then provided him with a little map of the world. There was a red dot over the Arctic Ocean, indicating where Steve Rogers was expected to be. Tony pocketed the phone again, turning back to his team.

 

Thor had set down beside them and was talking in hushed, low tones with Jane while Bruce stood nervously to one side, trying not to intrude. Tony noted Bruce fiddling with his wrist, which was adorned with a nice tan line where his watch should be. Tony made a mental note to invent a watch with a band that could stretch to ridiculous proportions before strolling over and gathering them into a little square.

 

“Okay, here’s my brilliant plan,” he said. “You two doctorly types are going to stay out here.” He pointed at Bruce and Jane. “And guard the copter. Thor and I will go in all brute strength and smooth talking until we find someone who’ll listen. But we don’t want them getting wind of you here until we’re already in, got it?” He looked directly at Bruce, who nodded somberly.

 

“I would like to go in with you,” Bruce said, glancing around shyly before ducking his head. Tony noticed with a start that the other man was also missing his glasses, and wondered how he could have been so unobservant. “But I understand.”

 

Tony wanted to protest and say something about how that wasn’t the reason why, but Thor was already clapping him on the back. Tony wheezed under the sudden impact, barely managing to stay standing.

 

“Come, Urðr,*” he said, and Tony followed him through the bush.

 

The walk was a bit long and bit boring. He tried engaging Thor in conversation, but the other man only looked at him with a strange melancholy.

 

“I may never understand your Midgardian ways,” Thor said as Tony tried to explain to him how, exactly, he meant to break into the high-tech base. “But I trust you to understand them for me.”

 

Tony couldn’t really say anything to that, so he let Thor’s brashness take over for the situation as they walked into the SHIELD base, only marginally accosted. All in all a good day; only one gun was fired as a warning.

 

He smirked at the thirty-seven other guns pointed at him, hands raised, as Thor spun Mjolnir behind him. “Hello!” he exclaimed. “Tony Stark here. I’ve got a meeting with Agent Phil Coulson. Ever heard of him?”

 

*

 

Bruce curled up under a tree and closed his eyes, letting the warm air wash over him for a moment as he centered himself. He took a few deep breaths, smelling tree sap and drying leaves, before trying to slip into the first stage of meditation.

 

“Wait, really?”

 

Bruce glanced over at where Jane stood, hands on her hips, eyebrow raised. “Really what?”

 

“You’re actually just going to let them walk into a very dangerous secret base all by themselves?”

 

He grimaced. “You didn’t have much to say about it, either.”

 

“No.” She waved her hand. “But that’s because I figured you had some sort of secret sneak-after-them plan. But I guess I was wrong.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and Bruce let out a long sigh.

 

“I honestly do believe Tony when he says we should stay here. SHIELD is only going to view me as a threat, and wouldn’t listen to a word either of them said until I was neutralized.” He traced his hands over his wrist, examining light skin against dark.

 

“What’s the big deal?” she asked, and Bruce sent her a look that said _giant green rage monster_. She sighed. “Okay, maybe I can see where they’re coming from. But Stark wouldn’t need you for your… Hulk. He’d need your wits.”

 

Bruce pulled his pack a little closer to his feet at her words. “I’ve never met anyone like Tony,” he said honestly. “I believe him when he says he can handle the situation.”

 

She let out a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, but what about Thor?”

 

“What about him?”

 

“I want to _be_ there for him. Don’t you want to be there for…?” She trailed off and shook her head. Bruce just stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on in that brilliant mind of hers. After a moment, Jane spoke again. “All right, Dr. Banner, let’s compromise. Let’s get to a point where we can see the base, but they can’t see us. Sound good?”

 

Bruce let out a sigh of his own as he stood up. He glanced at the helicopter for a moment before shouldering his pack. “Fine, but stay low and quiet.”

 

They made their way through the trees not exactly like a whisper, but silent enough. Bruce led her surreptitiously away from a few sensors that SHIELD had placed around the area as they moved through the underbrush. The crested a hill overlooking a deep gully, and Bruce had just a moment to consider that SHIELD wasn’t trying to hide very well when he heard a slight rustle of branches and the stretch of a bow being pulled back.

 

He whirled around, shocked, and placed himself in between Foster and the man automatically. He hadn’t even _smelled_ the other man coming, but there he was, with a fine sharp arrow pointing directly at Bruce’s face.

 

“I’ll give you twenty seconds,” the man said magnanimously. “To tell me who you are and why you’re here.”

 

From the compound below Bruce could hear what sounded like a gunshot, and his very skin bristled. The man didn’t move, just stared at him straight and sure.

 

“Fifteen seconds,” he said, fingers tightening on the bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Fate, undoing, ruin.


	8. Chapter 8

“How do you lose a nine-foot tall, radioactive green rage monster powerful enough to level _Harlem_?” Fury spit into the receiver, his face bulging with, well, fury.

 

“Pretty simply,” Natasha said over the comm. “He steals a helicopter and flies off faster than I can get a tracker on him. Doesn’t hurt that the Sheriff is so jaded to the mystical he didn’t even take pictures of the scene before he started bulldozing. I did locate Foster’s panic button in the wreckage. It’s smashed.”

 

Coulson stifled a slight frown at her words as he listened. He adjusted the paperwork in his hands as he pretended to be interested in something else.

 

“Well _find_ him,” Fury demanded. “Now he’s got a hostage and this situation has officially gone too far.”

 

There was a pause. Coulson stared at the receiver as if he could read Natasha through it. “I don’t think Dr. Foster is a hostage,” she said after a moment. “She was seen speaking to the police and describing the damage as caused by Thor. She wasn’t in any distress, and left soon after.”

 

Fury growled into the mic again. “I don’t care what she is. She is too important to Asgard relations to up and disappear, not to mention we need her busy working on that wormhole theory of hers.”

 

“And out of your hair?” Coulson said coolly, ignoring the way Fury shot him a glare.

 

“Just find her, and neutralize the Hulk.” He cut the comm.

 

Coulson passed him a few pieces of paper work as he settled back into his desk. “Dr. Selvig requesting more materials, sir,” he said pleasantly.

 

Fury grunted and signed off on them. “That’s not all you’re here for. What is it?”

 

Coulson took a moment to ponder Fury, tucked in behind his desk. He looked almost small when he sat there, nothing like the imposing figure he sometimes saw on the helicarrier. Right then he could almost believe that Fury was a human being, and not some SHIELD drone created by man. He wondered if this was what other people thought about, when they looked at him.

 

“Hawkeye spotted some trespassers. He radioed in before they came too close. In silence now, investigating.”

 

“Goddamned hikers,” Fury said in response. He rose from his desk and marched over to the door. “Keep me updated. I don’t want another--Agent!”

 

He shouted at the young woman who bumped into him. She gazed up at him, her eyes comically wide, then looked to Coulson for help. He could only shrug. “S-sorry, Director,” she said after a moment. “There are two infiltrators in the yard. They’re asking for Agent Coulson by name, sir.”

 

Coulson blinked a little in mild surprise. Fury growled at her. “Why didn’t you radio this in?” The three of them marched out the door, shoulder to shoulder, down the hall to the front yard.

 

“They’ve got some sort of jamming device, sir,” she explained. “Local transmissions are stalled.”

 

“That’s impossible; I just got off the comm with Agent Romanov.”

 

She shook her head. “I’m not sure about that, sir. But, um, that is, they specifically asked that you _not_ come, sir.”

 

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Agent,” he said, he voice low and dangerous, and Coulson rolled his eyes.

 

“Y-yes, sir!” She snapped to attention as they worked their way out of the base and into the yard.

 

Coulson blinked at the sudden onslaught of natural light. He followed Fury’s quick strides to the small circle of guards that had gathered around two men. He smiled, then, when he recognized one of them.

 

“Thor,” he greeted warmly, stepping around Fury and the guards to offer his hand.

 

“Son of Coul,” Thor responded in kind, and they shared a brief forearm shake. Thor gestured beside him to where another man stood, staring at Coulson like he might start crying. Coulson startled a little at that, but turned back as Thor began talking. “This is Tony Stark, an Urðr-kind. He has come to us from another world to warn of an impending invasion from my Brother.” His face was a grim line.

 

Coulson glanced behind him, but he could already hear Fury trying to reestablish radio contact and mobilize the troops. “I assumed we’d seen the last of Loki,” he said.

 

Thor inclined his head. “Alas, it is not to be. When I first heard that my Brother might return, my heart was glad, but knowing what he plans to do fills me only with sorrow. We must rally to defend the Tesseract. Do you know of it?”

 

Coulson was a very, very good agent, and so he didn’t let it show on his face that he knew exactly where the Tesseract was: approximately one hundred yards beneath his feet. “I know of it, yes.”

 

“Great!” The other man--Stark--finally spoke up. “Because we need to see it ASAP. Actually, faster than ASAP. Yesterday, even.” He pushed his way through the little crowd of guards, barely noticing the guns all around him. “You see, we’re kind of on the clock here, and we want to find Captain America before hell freezes over and Fury gets laid.”

 

He heard Fury let out a little grunt of displeasure, but inside Coulson was sparkling. “Captain America?”

 

“Oh, yeah, do you still do the whole Card Captor Sakura thing in this timeline? Because let me tell you, seeing the real deal is way more annoying than looking at cards all day.” He clapped his hands together, rubbing them fiercely. “So. Tesseract. Where? I know it’s on this base somewhere.”

 

Thor glanced down at him. “You knew this?”

 

“Of course! I’m not just going to drag you and Drs. Prim and Proper to any old SHIELD base. Only the best.” He strolled forward towards the door, and Coulson shot out an arm to stop him.

 

“Mr. Stark,” he said pleasantly. “You do not have authorization to enter.”

 

Stark opened his mouth to say something that was probably brilliant or biting, but he stopped. Coulson stopped, too, and everyone in the little huddle froze as they felt a small, tiny shiver echo through the dirt beneath their feet.

 

“Remain here,” he demanded, and he waved over a guard to hold Stark. He turned on his heel and rushed towards the door, Fury already ahead of him and shouting into the useless comm. “Drop your silencer, Stark!” he shouted over his shoulder. He couldn’t hear Stark’s answer as Thor rushed past him in a blinding rage.

 

“Loki!” he bellowed, and Coulson had to raise a hand to his ear to stop it ringing from the noise. Another shiver shook the base, this one bigger, and he knew, then, that it truly had been an explosion.

 

“Wait!” he heard Stark yell desperately as he neared the door. “Phil, _don’t_! You’ll be killed!”

 

He slipped inside the base, shutting the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This cliffhanger is worse than before, isn't it? :/


	9. Chapter 9

 

Clint was having a good day, and so he didn’t drop them where they stood. He eyed the pair carefully, trying to determine why they were there. They didn’t look particularly threatening. The woman was a tiny, slight thing, although she did have a taser at her waist that he could see her itching to use. The man was hardly better, and looked thin and gaunt. Clint could tell by the way he squinted that he needed glasses that he didn’t have. Probably far sighted, he decided, and moved a little closer to force the man to squint more.

 

He decided they weren’t a couple. They didn’t move with enough familiarity for that. Probably not sent by government, either. The man he might believe but the way the woman stood betrayed her as a civilian. His mind briefly entertained the idea that they could be vigilantes, when the sound of a gunshot below them brought him back to attention.

 

“Fifteen seconds,” he said mildly. He had an itch on his cheek that he couldn’t scratch, and that bothered him.

 

The man seemed to still, then stepped forward. “You must be Clint Barton.”

 

Clint tsked. “Good intel. Ten seconds.”

 

“No, ah…” The man glanced behind him, and Clint saw the universal _run, you idiot_ flit across his face. The woman didn’t budge. “M-my name is Bruce Banner. You might know me better as the Hulk.”

 

“Okay.” Clint lowered his bow, knowing then that he would need a stronger arrow that the one he currently had to take down the Hulk. He almost relished the challenge as he pushed a few buttons on his bow, hearing the correct arrow slide into place.

 

“Jane Foster,” the woman piped up. She stepped so that she was level with Banner. “We’re here because there is an impending attack on the Tesseract.”

 

Clint didn’t frown, he was too good for that. He just stared impassively at them. “Making threats usually isn’t the best way to walk away arrow-free.”

 

He saw Banner visibly gulp. “Ah, that, wouldn’t be the best idea.” Clint watched him grip the pack he was holding more firmly, and instantly knew there was a weapon hidden there.

 

“Drop the bag.” He drew up his bow again and Banner froze, then complied, slowly lowering the bag to the ground. Clint grunted. “Good.” He tapped a hand to his ear. No sound came from his comm. Radio silence, then. “We’re all just going to stand here and become good friends until you drop the signal jammer.”

 

“Signal jammer?” Banner pulled a face. “What do you think we are, SHIELD or something?”

 

Clint almost laughed at the irony. Instead, he stood there calmly, bowstring pulled back, and levelled them with his cool gaze. The minutes stretched, and then Banner glanced up.

 

“Did you feel that?”

 

“No. Just stand still,” Clint said. But really, he had felt that. A tiny tremor through the earth that didn’t seem like a quake. But he had his own shit to deal with, with the Hulk staring down the shaft of his arrow. He breathed slowly, and calmly, and almost kept his cool when an explosion rocked the compound, completely obliterating a building and sending a huge plume of smoke into the air.

 

He heard Banner shouting _get down_ , saw the woman dashing into the woods out of the corner of his eye. Then Banner was at his side as he pulled back an arrow, measuredly making his way down the hill.

 

The smoke was thick and moved quickly. Banner coughed almost immediately. Clint hardly noticed as another explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet, then another. Agents began streaming out of the compound by the dozen and then, out of thin air, a tall man with greasy hair and fucking _horns_ on his head materialized at the entrance. Clint let fly an arrow before his mind could catch up to the situation, and the greasy man merely swept it aside with a twist of his scepter.

 

Clint nocked another arrow, and watched as the man felled a dozen agents with a slice of blue energy. He heard Banner growling beside him and turned to see the other man’s eyes flashing green, even as he loosed the arrow and knew without looking that it had been knocked aside again.

 

“Bruce, no!”

 

Banner startled out of his reverie. Clint looked down to where another man was rushing up the hillside. Clint registered his panicked, grim expression, and didn’t shoot him.

 

“You can’t, Bruce. Fuck. He’s got Coulson. He’s _got him_.”

 

As one, he and Banner turned to look at the greasy man still cutting through agents like tissue paper. Clint felt his heart clench as he saw the man standing next to him in a perfectly tailored suit. Coulson. Coulson with a gun. Coulson with a gun _not_ shooting at the obvious intruder. Coulson protecting him. Coulson taking potshots at other agents. It made Clint’s blood boil as he watched, and he fired an arrow at Coulson, straight for his heart, and was glad when it was knocked away.

 

“Where’s Thor?” Banner rushed down the hill at full tilt now.

 

“I don’t know.” They met in the middle. Clint fired an arrow over their heads and it exploded in front of the greasy man, flinging shrapnel in all directions. He smirked as the man reeled back, his arm bloody. “He ran off without me and--”

 

They were cut off. Clint could still see their mouths moving as he ran forward, firing arrow after arrow at the heart of that monster, but their words were swept up in the whirring blades of a helicopter. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman from earlier at the helm, her face ashen. He calculated quickly before taking a running leap, jumping off the back of the man talking to Banner and flinging himself into the air to catch the foot of the copter.

 

He yanked himself up one handed and the woman eyed him with a sort of grim determination as she poorly flew the helicopter towards the battle. Clint jumped at her and shoved her out of the copter, registering how her eyes went wide as she tipped backwards into open air. He knew she would survive the fall, but he couldn’t guarantee the same survival rate for what he was planning to do.

 

His leg hooked around the controls as he leaned out of the other door, firing another arrow. He was close enough then to see the man’s eyes grow wide, to see Coulson reaching up and shouting in his ear. He was close enough to see Coulson’s eyes flashing a strange, unnatural blue. Coulson aimed his gun at Clint and _fired_ , but it went wide. Clint pushed the nose of the copter down, thinking a vindictive _block this_ as he drove the whirring blades into the ground, into them.

 

He leapt from the copter and had just enough time for two quick rolls before it exploded, sending him flying in a painful tangle of limbs. He landed face down and felt his nose break.

 

Clint leapt to his feet and whirled around, already drawing up another arrow as blood poured down his face. But there was no one to fire at. He gazed at the bodies of fallen agents strewn around the compound, at the twisted hunk of burning metal that was the helicopter.

 

Coulson was gone. They both were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo this is really the first action scene I've ever written. I would appreciate your feedback!


	10. Chapter 10

Tony was holding onto Bruce like his life depended on it and, right then, it really might have. Bruce could only hold him back loosely, with one arm, and listen as the other man muttered nonsense to himself over and over about how useless he was.

 

“I’m nothing without the suit. Fuck. Steve was right.”

 

Bruce couldn’t understand what he was talking about, so he just muttered soothing words right back. He was feeling sort of strange and emotionless, which was how he usually felt when the other guy flared up so brightly, only to be stomped down again. He went through the motions of calming his friend as he watched Clint rush around the battlefield, checking for survivors, before heading towards the hill.

 

Clint gathered Jane in his arms and she protested, but allowed him to carry her over to where Bruce and Tony sat, dumbfounded, on the ground. Bruce could see an unnatural bruise on her ankle from where she had fallen wrong in her sudden departure from the helicopter, but he couldn’t even muster the energy to shoot Clint a dirty look. Tony was still muttering into his shoulder as Clint set Jane down at his side.

 

“You’re a doctor, right?” he said crisply, and Bruce nodded. He saw quickly drying blood on Clint’s face. “We’ve got wounded you can actually help.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

 

Numbly, Bruce turned to Tony. “You need to help Jane,” he lied. “I’m going to investigate the- the base.” Tony seemed confused for a moment before crawling over to Jane and helping her arrange her ankle.

 

Clint walked off without another word, and Bruce scrambled to catch up. “I’m not exactly that kind of doctor,” he said in a rush. Clint ignored him. “But I’ll do what I can.”

 

Triage was always something he could lose himself in. Clint made a good nurse, and followed Bruce’s orders immediately. He assessed the damage efficiently, gathering up those who could still stand and walk and ordering them to aid those who couldn’t. Anyone who seemed confused got a dirty glare from Clint and quickly fell into line.

 

He didn’t even realize it when it happened, but at some point Tony had come down the hill and was working by his side, moving bodies living and dead and in between, pressing a hand to staunch the flow of blood, providing his belt to halt the screams as Bruce set broken limbs. They worked in tandem, hardly needing to talk, and Tony just seemed to read the situation right off Bruce’s shoulders like he was an open book. Tony knew exactly what to do, exactly where to be, and Bruce was grateful for it.

 

“We found him!”

 

Together, they glanced up at the shout of joy from part way across the compound. He could see rubble being moved, then the outline of a black leather glove. Beside him, Tony jerked to his feet and stumbled over to help them lift stones.

 

Bruce finished with the patient he was on, and then moved to the next most urgent case.

 

A few moments later he watched as Tony helped the large, leather-clad man to his feet. Clint muttered his name in his ear as he passed by. _Director Fury_. Bruce had a moment to appreciate Fury’s imposing form, acknowledge that maybe there was a reason SHIELD was always able to keep up with him, then he stood and began to walk away.

 

He got part way across the field before he was stopped by Clint’s hand on his elbow. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Banner?”

 

He glanced back. “I…”

 

Clint gave him a disgusted look. It was one he knew well. “I’m not sure how far you think you can get before I put an arrow in your ass, but it’s not that far.”

 

Bruce laughed, but it felt thick and foul in his throat. “I can’t get captured. You don’t understand what they’ll make him do.”

  
“Yes,” Clint said calmly. “I do understand.” They stared at each other for a long moment, before Clint finally said, “How many more people have to die today, Dr. Banner?”

 

They walked back to the compound together.

 

Tony was in a tizzy as they approached. Bruce cleared his throat and tried not to delight in the way Tony’s face lit up at the sight of him. He had a brief flashback to their twenty-six hour flight, of Tony talking animatedly about all the new theories his mistaken-time travel would unlock, of Tony falling asleep on his arm.

 

“I thought you’d left,” Tony said. His voice was warm.

 

“I just needed some air,” Bruce lied easily, and together they got back to work.

 

Jane eventually limped her way over as well, a thick cloth bound around her ankle, and the three of them and Clint stabilized or closed the eyes of all those present until Fury’s calvary arrived.

 

He felt a hand on his shoulder. He glanced down. It was leather. He glanced up at Fury’s stern face. “We’ve been looking for you, Dr. Banner.” His other arm was in a sling.

 

“Surprise?” he managed. He heard Tony snort behind him.

 

Fury sighed. “We were hoping to bring you in on a little energy project of ours, but that just got stolen by a God of Lies.” Somehow, when he said it in that gruff voice of his, it didn’t sound so absurd. Almost as logical as a Gamma-irradiated scientist. “So now we need you for a different reason. Namely, the retrieval of the Tesseract.”

 

“I would just like to point out,” Tony piped up from behind him. He could feel Tony move closer, the warmth of his body only a step behind. “That if you had listened to me in the first place this would not have happened.”

 

Fury growled at him. Bruce tried not to shrink under his gaze. “We understand you have some inside information,” Fury said after a moment, as if he was trying not to say too much. “And we are willing to entertain that information in pursuit of the Tesseract.”

 

“Fine, great,” Tony said. Bruce heard him rustle in his pockets and pull out his phone. “But I’m not looking for anything until we get this whole Captain America bullshit straightened out.”

 

“What are you on about?”

 

“Jarvis,” Tony said into the phone. “Pull up estimates of Captain America’s whereabouts.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And double check them. Your day estimate was way off.”

 

“Of course, sir. Director Fury, shall I upload this information directly into the SHIELD database?”

 

Bruce watched Fury closely as he ground his teeth, apparently determined not to let Tony get to him. “Yes.”

 

Jarvis let out a little _ding_ to indicate it was done. He felt Tony rustle to pocket the phone again. “Great,” Tony said. “Now that that’s settled, you’re going to put us on your helicarrier at those coordinates.”

 

“Absolutely out of the question,” Fury said.

 

Tony balked. “Why?”

 

Fury grinned. Bruce briefly entertained the idea of running off again. “Because we have something faster.”


	11. Chapter 11

 

It was a jet. Not just a jet, but a ridiculously fast, ridiculously comfortable jet that Fury had promised them held many more tricks up its sleeve. The jet was long and narrow with a row of swiveling seats that even Tony, so used to flying privately, could sink into and think _wow, this is comfortable_.

 

The inside was sleek black and silver, with enough control panels to give a Trekkie a serious nerd-boner. Tony ran a hand over one of them and wished his uplink buttons still worked. But they had been fried by Thor along with the rest of his gear, save for his phone.

 

He was already commandeering the back half of the plane to spread out the tools and equipment that he had demanded from Fury in exchange for his help (and Bruce’s help) when Clint entered the plane, followed by a nervous Bruce and a tipsy-looking Jane. He glanced up and smiled at them, catching the tail end of their conversation.

 

“Can’t believe they want to put me eighty thousand feet in the air in a high-pressure rocket ship,” Bruce grumbled to Jane.

 

Tony smirked at him. “You flew with me already.”

 

Bruce helped Jane to her seat. She was wobbling fiercely from the medication she had been given. She smiled at him and patted his arm. “It’s different,” Bruce said after a moment. “And that plane was only about fifty thousand feet up.”

 

Jane continued to pat his arm until Bruce pulled away. “Did you know,” she said drunkenly. “That your butt looks great in that suit?”

 

Tony burst out laughing and watched as Bruce looked down at himself, confused. “I’m not even wearing a suit.”

 

“Noo,” she waved her hands around and slumped over the arm of the chair. “Not _that_ one. I mean the one you wore to the APS conference.” She sighed dreamily.

 

Bruce helped her sit up again. “I don’t think they got your dosage right,” he said. Clint walked up beside him and whispered something in his ear that Tony couldn’t hear, but it made Bruce look grateful. “Thanks,” he murmured back before walking to the back of the jet and sitting in one of the spinning chairs. Clint sat beside Jane and began speaking with her in low tones.

 

Tony turned back to his work and flipped open the briefcase full of materials he had collected from the SHIELD base. He began to lay everything out before taking a socket wrench to one of the chairs to remove it from the plane. After a few minutes Clint stood and walked to the front of the plane, and Tony heard the engines engage.

 

“I can’t believe you convinced Fury to give you all that stuff,” Bruce commented as he watched Tony removed two of the seats and three control panels and begin cannibalizing them for spare parts.

 

“I’m very persuasive.” He began sorting wires by length and output. “And I told him he owed me one for losing Thor.”

 

He could see Bruce wince out of the corner of his eyes. “I can’t believe he fell for Loki’s trick…”

 

“I can,” Tony said grimly. He pried a few circuit boards apart and began to heat up his soldering iron. He could feel the jet jerk into motion beneath him. “He did the exact same fucking thing in my timeline. Only, that time he didn’t wind up half way across the universe. He just wound up in a box built for—“ He stopped himself and glanced up at Bruce.

 

Bruce didn’t seem to be listening to him. He was slumped low in his chair, one hand on his forehead and the other drumming out a beat on leather. His eyes stared blankly forward and Tony could see a thin sheen of sweat on his brow.

 

“Bruce,” he said, and watched as Bruce startled out of his reverie. The plane lifted off the ground and Bruce winced. “Could you give me a hand with this?”

 

“Sure.” Bruce slid off the chair and sat cross-legged on the floor beside Tony. “What are you making?”

 

Tony smirked back at him. “Smart guy like you? You’ll figure it out.”

 

He threw himself into his work, pulling Bruce along behind him. He connected Jarvis to the plane’s systems as they climbed higher and higher, then began to reroute the circuit boards in his hands. And he was right, Bruce did catch on almost immediately, and began to hand him tools before he even had to ask, or adjust the circuits when he had misaligned them. They worked in tandem for a while, occasionally calling upon Jarvis for a quick diagnostic. Bruce seemed to be enjoying the AI, and he cradled the phone in his lap whenever they talked. Tony watched him holding everything at arm’s length to see it, and vowed to build the man an indestructible pair of eyeglasses.

 

By the time they had reached flight level they were like a well-oiled machine producing tiny feats of engineering.

 

Tony fitted a little circle of glass and metal into a cotton glove he had taken. It shone out in the palm of the glove, and he carefully ran the wires of it up his arm to connect to his arc reactor.

 

“A blaster, then,” Bruce said as he watched Tony pull his shirt back on.

 

“Repulsor technology, but yeah.” He flexed his hand carefully. “It should do the job. Let’s build another.”

 

They built another hand repulsor, and managed to cobble together two metal boots out of spare chair parts and wires. Tony was just trying them on when Clint came over the comm, announcing that they would be beginning their descent in five minutes. A little fasten seatbelts sign came on, and Tony ignored it.

 

“What do you think?” Tony asked, indicating the boots and doing a little twirl. “Too gauche?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said mildly. “Which means they’re a perfect match for you.”

 

Tony feigned indignation and settled into one of the chairs. He propped his leg on his knee and began to adjust some of the screws. “You wound me, Dr. Banner.” He tightened the boot until it sat snugly on his ankle, then stood again to walk around the cabin.

 

“You did ask.” Bruce shrugged.

 

The boots gave him a little spring in his step. They flexed and molded to his feet so that, despite their heaviness, he was actually able to walk more easily than before. He walked by Jane, who was eyeing him with interest, her gaze slightly less clouded with drugs.

 

“Now for the real test,” Tony said, and jumped.

 

He immediately regretted his decision as he careened upwards into the ceiling and came crashing back down. The tiny servos in the boots took the brunt of the fall out of his legs but he still collapsed to the ground, dazed. They had more of a kick than he’d thought.

 

He heard Clint laughing uproariously from the comm, and Jane stifling a twitter. Bruce was on him in a flash, his face an equal mix of amusement and concern.

 

“Did you hit your head?” he asked, and reached out a hand to help Tony to his feet.

 

Tony accepted his outstretched hand. “No more than usual.” Tony wavered for a minute as he stood. He frowned as Bruce dropped his hand and began to examine his head. Bruce pulled his head down to look at the top of it, tutting in annoyance.

 

“Did you know they would do that?” he asked.

 

“Nope. Well, sort of.” He held still as Bruce ran his fingers through his hair. “I usually make them for flying, not for jumping. But the hand repulsors should be enough for that.”

 

Bruce pulled back, his fingertips stained with red. “You cut your head. Doesn’t look too bad, other than that.”

 

“Here.” Jane produced a hand towel from somewhere and Tony pressed it gratefully to his head. “Looks like you managed to hit the only sharp thing on this plane, Stark,” she commented.

 

Tony glanced up and noted a tiny protruding screw, now adorned with bits of his hair and flesh. “Just lucky, I guess.”

 

“Going down,” Clint said over the comm, his voice still laced with humor.

 

Tony felt the jet shift under him as they began their descent. The boots automatically compensated for him and he stayed upright, but Bruce stumbled a little into him before pulling back and absent-mindedly wiping his hand on his shirt. Tony saw his blood on Bruce’s shirt and frowned, but he didn’t say anything.

 

The two of them stumbled over to the chairs and sat down, finally fastening their seatbelts. His frown deepened as he caught sight of Jane’s huge grin.

 

“What are you so happy about?”

 

She shrugged her shoulders. “Just thinking about how nice it will be to see Thor again.”

 

Tony saw Bruce stiffen out of the corner of his eye, and he sighed. “I’m glad you’re confident.”

 

She leaned back in her chair, a natural response to the ever-dipping plane. “He travels through realms for a living, and is functionally immortal. I wish I could be there with him, but I also know he’ll make it out all right.” She was smiling pleasantly, and Tony wondered if the drugs had completely left her system, or if they had ever even been as bad as Bruce thought. “And he’s got Mjolnir, which is basically like his other girlfriend.”

 

Tony couldn’t help but laugh at that.

 

“Wait,” Bruce said after a moment. “We’re approaching awfully fast, and we aren’t leveling out.”

 

“Didn’t Fury tell you?” Clint said over the comm. “Based on your projections, we’ve got about thirty feet of ice to drill through. This is the only plane capable of that.”

 

Bruce jerked around to stare at the door. “The _plane_ is going to drill through the ice?”

 

“Yep.”

 

Tony felt the plane shudder, and glanced out the window just in time to see the wings folding in to themselves. They sunk into the body of the jet and the plane began to tilt more rapidly until the floor was at about a forty-five degree angle. He gripped his seat tightly and whipped his head around to look to Jane, who was looking a little sick, then to Bruce, who was looking a little _green_.

 

“Just relax, big guy,” he said automatically. “Fury wouldn’t put us in a plane just to kill us all in the crash.” He tried to laugh. “Anyway, you’ll be fine. Green’ll come out if anything happens to you.”

 

Bruce let out a long, slow whine and began grappling with his seat belt. “Don’t say things like that. That’s what I’m afraid of.” He reached under the seat and pulled out his pack, tossing it over his shoulders. He jumped to his feet and promptly fell, sliding towards the front of the plane on his side as the plane dipped further down. It was really picking up speed, now.

 

“Get back in your seat, Banner!” Tony ripped through his own belt and stomped down the plane. “You’re not going anywhere.”

 

“I’m going _away_ from here. I’m going to crash.” Tony saw his eyes flash green as he pulled himself up the body of the plane towards the emergency exit. “I can’t let the other guy out here.”

 

“You’re not going to.”

 

“A tiny, little _static shock_ was all it took last time!” His hands fumbled on the emergency door release.

 

Tony reached out and grabbed his wrist, yanking him away. “You got struck by fucking _lightning_. Now sit down and relax!”

 

Clint’s voice sounded over the comm, low and dangerous. “Don’t make me come back there.”

 

Bruce glanced up at Tony nervously, then down at his boots. Tony could see his mind whirring for a few precious seconds, probably calculating how close they were to the ground. “Clint isn’t even worried,” Tony said. Bruce just gave him a grim look.

 

“Your boots will hold you,” he said, and ripped handle right off the door.

 

Tony shouted as the door flew open, pulling Bruce out of his hands and into the open air. He knew, instinctively, that Bruce would be able to survive such a fall. But he also knew that Bruce would be the Hulk for way longer than the time they had remaining after he landed. He knew Bruce could end up anywhere in the world. He knew Bruce would run. He knew this Bruce was not the same man he had met on a helicarrier in another world. This Bruce was an uncontrolled variable.  
  
His boots would have held him, if he’d let them, but he just took two steps forward and jumped out of the plane after Bruce. He heard Jane shout at him as he did so, and had a brief moment to cast a grin at her over his shoulder.

 

The air was like sharp ice against his skin. He held his arms to his side and fell in a straight line down, aiming for Bruce. He hit the other man full on and gathered him into his arms, briefly registering _green_ and _angry_ before deciding he just did not have time for this.

 

He could hardly tell where the sky ended and the ground began, so he just wrapped his legs around Bruce’s waist and pointed his hands in a general _down_ direction and activated the repulsors. He felt the left one catch, the right one didn’t.

 

He grimaced. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, to stop their descent. He needed both gloves for that. With two gloves he could have flown. Rocky, unsteady flying, but still flying. With only one, all he could do was slow them down. He pulled his hand to his face and licked at the wires, hoping the extra moisture would help with the connection and tried again. No luck.

 

Tony felt Bruce shifting to wrap his arms around his neck. He could see Bruce’s hair whipping around his face as Bruce fixed his brown eyes upon him with a look that said simultaneously _you idiot_ and _how could you do this to me?_

 

He threw his left repulsor into overdrive and felt something blunt hit his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shh, shh, all your questions will be answered in the next chapter.
> 
> I was definitely channeling my own fear of flying for this chapter, though.


	12. Chapter 12

Things always moved in slow motion when he fired his bow.

 

Clint breathed in, taking aim, then out slowly, oh so slowly, and upon the peak of his exhale he fired. The arrow shot forward, leaving a thin cord behind attached to his waist, and he watched it as it appeared to arc wide only to be caught by the wind and whip back down, jabbing into the back of Tony Stark.

 

His movements were light and measured as he braced his feet on either side of the door and watched black tendrils of cord slip out of the arrow head and wrap themselves around Stark and Banner tightly. Ten cords in all, and he could see each dark inch of it extend in slow motion. He tugged the bow back and the cord went taut, nearly yanking him off his feet at the sudden tension, and then his bow began to pull the two men up almost as fast as they had fallen.

 

He could hear Foster shouting, her words low and elongated as he moved. She was worried, obviously, but he had other things to deal with right then. He flipped backwards as the bodies came hurtling towards him and yanked them inside.

 

Clint gripped the door and took one, two, three steps forward, pulling it along with him and slamming it shut, cutting off the outside world just as they crashed through the ice.

 

They were underwater in four seconds. He could tell by the way the jet shifted under his feet. He turned around and assessed the situation clinically. Foster was out of her seat, plummeting towards the two men who lay in a tangled heap at the base of the plane. He could see Banner struggling to pull himself away from Stark and watched as he ripped through the cords—weighted to withstand ten thousand pounds of pressure—with ease.

 

Banner stumbled to his feet and held his head in his hands, breathing heavily. Stark was up in a flash and reached towards him. Clint saw all this as his hands flew over a nearby control panel and leveled their decent, slowing them until they were puttering along like a tug boat in the water.

 

“Is this some Loki magic?” he asked, and both Stark and Banner froze and looked at him.

 

Banner was panting heavily, his eyes flashing between green and brown and his skin sallow and sickly-looking. Stark seemed confused, then contemplative, as he stood near one of the most deadly men on Earth—for many reasons—without a care in the world.

 

It was Foster who spoke up. “That’s impossible. He hasn’t been near Bruce.”

 

The ship rocked gently with the current. “No,” Stark commented. “He hasn’t. How’re you feeling, Bruce?”

 

Banner growled at them and hustled away to stand on the other side of the plane. “Angry. What possessed you to jump out of a damned _plane_?”

 

“What possessed you?” Stark countered with a shrug. He began to fiddle with the glove on his right hand. Clint watched him closely, noting the wires and flashes of metal with interest.

 

“I can _survive_ that kind of fall.” Banner’s voice was low and completely unlike his normal tone. Clint activated a tranquilizer arrow just in case. He made it one that could fell an elephant. He considered. Maybe a dozen elephants. “You _can’t_.”

 

“Pft,” Tony waved his hand dismissively. “It would have been fine if the repulsor worked.”

 

“You can’t just _do shit_ like that, Tony!” Banner was on his feet again, stalking towards them. “There won’t always be someone to protect you! This isn’t your world!”

 

“Bruce,” Stark said calmly. “Put down Jarvis.”

 

Banner glanced down at the phone in his hand in confusion. Clint could see him considering, probably wondering when he had picked it up. Truth was he had never set it down, not even when he was plummeting to the earth. Then, his face twisted in disgust and his eyes flashed _blue_ and Clint had his bow up and fired an arrow before he even registered what he was doing.

 

It shot through the phone, embedding it in the wall.

 

Immediately, Banner slumped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Clint had expected Stark to run to him, but it was Foster who did as Stark turned to face him, his face a storm cloud of rage.

 

“I will _end you_.” He leapt at Clint, his boots carrying him further than any human had right to jump.

 

Clint dodged the clumsy attack easily. He had an arrow in one hand and he swept it down and around, slicing through the wires on Stark’s little blasters like a knife before he could activate them. He twisted his leg and knocked Stark’s feet out from under him, wincing as his shin connected with the heavy metal boots. He had the arrow nocked and bow drawn, pointed at Stark’s neck, before the man could even finish falling.

 

“Consider the situation carefully, Stark,” Clint said calmly as he breathed in, and out.

 

Stark was glaring at him, but he did glance to the side to where Foster was tending to Banner, then up to where his phone stuck into the wall. He visibly deflated. “Fuck,” he said. “That’s how he got to the Tesseract early.”

 

Clint offered him his hand. Stark ignored it, crawling to his feet by himself. “How did he gain access to your phone?”

 

“It must have been…” Stark seemed to consider. He touched a hand to the blue circle in his chest. “When he unmade me.” He swore again to himself. “Of course. That explains how Jarvis was able to retain his memory. It wasn’t all stored here. J is wherever the Tesseract opens into… That son of a—I will end _him_.”

 

“Can we trust that Rogers is actually where he said he was?”

 

“I don’t think we have any other choice. This is close to his original coordinates, and with a year of drift it’s plausible.” Stark went over to Banner, who was beginning to stir. Clint watched as Stark knelt beside Banner, whose head was in Foster’s lap, and smiled grimly at him. “Welcome back, big guy.”

 

The two of them helped Banner to his feet, and Clint decided to give them a little privacy as he went back to the helm and directed them the last few miles to Rogers’ location. He could hear the three scientists talking quietly, discussing their little theories about how the Tesseract had interacted with the technology in the phone, and he tuned it out after a while. He could hear the quiet sounds of Banner and Stark working together to fix his blasters, properly this time, and Foster commenting on how this basically proved that time was non-linear. They all had a good laugh about that.

 

“This is your captain speaking,” he said into the comm as they approached the edge of Rogers’ ship, which was sticking through the bottom of the ice invitingly. “We have reached our destination. Local time is hell-in-a-hand-basket o’clock. You are now free to move about the cabin.”


	13. Chapter 13

He felt sluggish.

 

On a normal day that would have been enough to send him into a panic. He hadn’t felt sluggish for years, not since he submitted to the whims of science and grew into himself. But right then, he was so sluggish that he didn’t even notice that he should be panicking.

 

Steve shivered in the cold air, feeling his blood picking up its pace to spread warmth through him. His mouth felt dry, his tongue thick and heavy, as he tried to speak. He could smell oil and heat.

 

He slipped his eyes open and looked down at himself. He could see a man standing over him, running gloved hands that emanated a strange heat over his body. He looked up at the man’s face and breathed a sigh of relief.

 

“Howard,” he said.

 

The man stilled and the heat concentrated on his flesh painfully. He shied away from it and the man pulled back.

 

“He’s awake enough,” he heard him say.

 

A face surrounded by curly locks came into view. The hair reminded him of Peggy and he smiled, feeling his brain chugging along like a ruined Chevrolet. “My name is Dr. Banner,” the man said. “I’m going to take a look at you, all right Captain Rogers?”

 

He could feel hands on his body, examining him, and he played along even though he really wanted to say that he couldn’t be hurt. He was Captain America. But they knew that. The Doctor had addressed him by name. He decided to let them have their fun.

 

Steve was still smiling pleasantly to himself when his metabolism caught up to the drugs they had given him and emptied them from his blood stream all at once, forcing his last few memories to the sudden forefront of his mind. He jumped up from the bed and whipped around, feeling empty without his shield.

 

He ran his eyes over the doctor, who was looking at him nervously, and the man who was quite definitely not Howard Stark, no matter how much he looked like him. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded.

 

Not-Howard laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always the soldier, never the bride.”

 

“Everything’s all right, Captain,” the doctor said. He had his hands up like he wanted to reach for Steve and soothe him, or perhaps deck him and run, but he held back. “You went down with that ship. You’ve been, unconscious, for a while. We’ve revived you.”

 

Steve glanced around the room, noting that he was on a plane. It didn’t bother him; he’d already taken down one plane, and could do it again. “Americans?” he asked. Not-Howard laughed again.

 

“Yep,” he said simply. “Not that it really matters. And stop standing like that, you’re making me nervous.” He gestured at all of Steve. “Stand down, or at ease, or whatever. Chill out. Hang loose.” He made a strange motion with his hand and Steve frowned at him.

 

“I’m not in the mood for games. If you aren’t planning on taking me back to Command then I am afraid I will have to commandeer this plane.”

 

“So polite!”

 

Banner stepped away from him slightly. “No need for that,” he said. “Captain Rogers we have a few, things, that we need to explain to you. Please, have a seat.”

 

Steve assessed the situation. He could hear talking behind the cockpit door—a woman and a man—but with only four of them he could take them out sitting or standing. He sat in the nearest chair and allowed Banner to begin examining him again. He watched carefully as Banner cast a glance over his shoulder at not-Howard, who shrugged.

 

“I’ve been explaining this to everyone we’ve come across for days now. Your turn.” He sat down in a belligerent huff.

 

Banner turned back to him, his face a grim line. “The year is 2012. You’ve been frozen for approximately seventy years. We need your help to stop a threat against Earth—the entire Earth, not just some of us.”

 

Steve sat back and allowed the man’s words to wash over him. He listened as he tried to tell him that the man behind him was Tony Stark—Howard Stark’s son—and that everyone he knew had died of old age a long time ago. He registered the tale of SHIELD and their hunt for, and eventual discovery of, Steve. He heard all the words that went into the tale of a god from another world threatening to wage war on Earth, and he didn’t believe any of them.

 

“Why should I believe any of this?” he asked when the Doctor was done.

 

Stark sighed. “Show him the video Fury made.”

 

Banner handed him a pane of glass and Steve nearly threw it in shock as it lit up with the face of an angry man with an eye patch.

 

“What you are about to see is every known video record relating to Captain America’s disappearance. This may disturb you, Rogers, but it’s something you need to see.”

 

His face blinked out of existence, and Steve was struck with the weight of his own death. He clutched the glass in his hands tightly as the images moved across the screen, wondering in the back of his mind how they had managed to get a moving picture to look so small. All this, to fool him?

 

He registered the movie in flashes.

 

A reporter pressed a microphone in Howard’s face. “Mr. Stark! What will you do now that your greatest invention is feared dead?”

 

Colonel Phillips, grim and determined. “I’ve never met a better man. He became what he was always meant to be.”

 

The Commandos, their face flashing one after another—Dugan, Morita, Falsworth—all of them, and he closed his eyes but he could still hear their voices as they praised him and mourned him.

 

He opened his eyes when there was silence. Peggy, looking into a camera. Her eyes were moist, her lips a perfect dark. He could almost picture how red they were. “We lost contact at 0936 hours.” She buried her face in her hands, suddenly no longer the picture of poise. “The band is playing for you, Steve. Come dance with me?”

 

He snapped the glass pane in two, and Banner wordlessly handed him another one. He watched the videos to the end and barely heard when Fury’s voice came back on, asked him to rise to a new challenge, described the same scene with the Tesseract and a vengeful god.

 

The picture froze on that man’s face. It had clearly been snapped in the middle of a battle, and Steve memorized it. The man’s narrow chin and blue eyes, his long hair. He took one look at the staff clutched in the man’s hand emitting a blue light and knew, right then, that even if they weren’t tell the entire truth, that they needed him. When he looked at that blue he saw only HYDRA.

 

Steve set the pane of glass aside and folded his hands together. He leaned forward and gathered his thoughts for a minute. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll help you.”

 

*

 

Natasha crouched, low to the ground, and slipped around the corner. A quick jab of her elbow felled the two guards posted at the door.

 

“We’re in,” she said into her radio, and nodded the other agent through the doors. She watched him walk through to another door at the end of the hall and begin fiddling with the panel. She kept one hand on her earpiece, the other hovering over the trigger of her gun, as she waited.

 

“Now,” came a bored voice through the comm, and she echoed it. The other agent slammed a metal rod into the panel in the door and she watched a hologram take shape. She heard screaming on the other end of the comm. The door opened.

 

“Obtain the device, and then return to the base,” the voice said. “Don’t wait up for me.”

 

She watched as Coulson pulled out the device and smiled. “Already done.”

 

She waited until Loki’s voice went silent. She carefully turned off her earpiece, raised her gun, and fired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh snap.  
> (It happens quickly in this chapter, but Rogers' video and Bruce's explanation take place over several hours. Essentially during their entire flight home.)


	14. Chapter 14

It wasn’t that Loki delighted in the destruction of the humans. No, he cared more for the mayhem that resulted. It was almost disappointing when they bowed easily before him, terrified by his might. Still, he relished a little in the gloating.

 

He appreciated that they weren’t as stupid as Thor had been. These ones had brains, and were more than willing to submit to him and the power he wielded. He felt a strange sort of loss as he watched them fall to their knees, one after another. He missed the mischief he had been causing almost immediately.

 

It was no matter. The humans were not _all_ intelligent enough to realize they were cattle. One, an old woman, rose. Her face was a grim line. He noted the finery she wore, and assumed she had been one of the party-goers he had accosted so gleefully a few moments prior. It had truly been a lovely gala in Hong Kong, and Loki decided he would have such a gala when he became rightful ruler of Asgard.

 

“I will resist,” she said. She was speaking Vietnamese, but Loki’s allspeak helpfully translated for him.

 

He arched an eyebrow. “Resist?” he boomed. His voice carried unnaturally far and he watched the crowd wince. “There is no _resisting_ that which is all-powerful. All-encompassing.” He raised his scepter disdainfully. He made a little show of powering it up and watched her stumble back, eyes full of fear, before shoring up and glaring at him in that stupid way only humans could.

 

“You are not the worst man I have met,” she said, and Loki fired.

 

Or, tried to anyway, because as he flicked the scepter down there was a _twang_ and an arrow lodged itself just above the blue sphere. The energy struck it and moved back towards him, creating an explosion that blasted him backwards out of the little circle of human filth.

 

He knocked into a few of them along the way and landed with a solid crack on cool concrete. He cursed his own stupidity as he stood. His eyes immediately fell on the man, a hundred feet up in a towering skyscraper, already firing another arrow at him. He knocked it aside and it lodged itself in the ground, exploding. The humans scattered.

 

Loki spun in time to deflect another blow from a heavy metal shield. He smacked aside the blonde man wielding it, sending him crashing into the cement. The man hunched over, clutching his stomach in pain as he tried to catch his breath. Loki smirked.

 

“Midgard’s little ones have come out to play.” He smacked the blonde again, driving him into the ground, then caught the arrow aimed for his head. He cast it far aside and barely moved as it exploded. “I’ve heard all about you,” he hit him again, and again. “Captain America. The great hope of some other world.” He pointed his scepter upwards and blasted through the building where the archer stood. It exploded in a shower of rubble. “And Hawkeye. A friend of mine in another life.” For a moment, no arrows flew at him.

 

Captain America spat out a wad of blood into the ground. “We’re no friends of yours.”

 

Loki felt anger flash over him. He slammed the butt of his scepter into the back of the blonde’s head, growling. “You will kneel before me, _friend_ , or I—“

 

A blast of energy hit his shoulder, sending him reeling back. The acrid smell of burnt fabric hit his nose. The Captain leapt to his feet and took up a paltry fighting stance, still woozy from the blows. Loki felt a smile stretch across his face. “Ah, yes! The man of iron whom no magic can defeat. Here he stands, bare before the world.”

 

Stark narrowed his eyes at him. His hands were raised and Loki could see a glow of energy there, matching the glow in his chest. Loki had seen the images of the man from the very technology he so coveted—covered in metal like a second skin. But the image before him was more flesh than metal, and it only made his smile broaden.

 

“How do you know all this?” Stark ground out.

 

Loki laughed. They were pests before him, and he decided to play with his catch. The Captain seemed weak, unsteady, and Stark had none of the suit he had once wielded. “A gift to myself, from another life. The technology you rely so heavily on, bent to my whims, existing only to serve me. Did you view it as a child, Stark? Or perhaps a trusted friend?”

 

Stark let out growl and clenched his fingers. Loki blocked the energy blast with one of his own and strolled forward, blocking blast after blast as they came. Captain America took another swing at him and for a moment the three of them performed a macabre dance as the blonde tried to punch him out, occasionally landing blows that Loki could easily shrug off, and Stark attempted to blast through him. He took the Captain’s blows head-on and dodged the blasts.

 

He grew bored after some time of this, dealing with two men who could not truly have matched him in their prime, and turned his scepter to one side. With an absent flick of his wrist he sent Stark careening backwards into a nearby building. He heard the man groan wetly as he hit.

 

Loki twirled, leveling his scepter on Captain America. But the man wasn’t looking at him. He was looking behind him.

 

“Banner,” Captain America said, and Loki turned.

 

The first punch hit him straight on in a burst of blue and green. It was like a hit from Mjolnir and it sent him flying backwards. His scepter slipped from his fingertips. He fell to the ground and Banner was on him in a second. The man’s body was frail, but the technology wrapped around his wrists empowered him as he laid into Loki with blow after blow, his face calm and impassive.

 

He was stunned, wheezing, when Banner was finally yanked off of him. He stared up into the starry sky and saw the glow of Stark’s repulsor as it came into view. He could hear Stark wheezing as well.

 

“I’ve said it before,” Stark said. “Make a move, reindeer games.”

 

Loki glanced to his side, at where Captain America stood straight and tall, the bruises on his skin already healing. Beside him was the archer, bleeding slightly from the head, his bow drawn back and an arrow notched. He watched Banner breathing deeply and calmly as blue and green energy flowed around his wrists and up his arms. He glanced back at Stark and let out a deep sigh and felt his illusions slipping away.

 

He lay before them, the picture of a defeated man, and tried not to smile too broadly.

 

*

 

Jane watched with some trepidation as they unloaded Loki onto the helicarrier. They had shackled him in heavy chains, but she knew if he was anything like his brother he could tear through them without a thought. He had a little pleasant smirk on his face as Clint lead him down the gang plank and handed him off to a platoon of guards, who escorted him away.

 

“Come on!” Stark said, not for the first time. “I just want to examine it a little. I’ll put it back together right after!”

 

“Maybe later,” Banner responded, again not for the first time. “We don’t have time for you to dig into my tech.”

 

Stark let out a huff and crossed his arms over his chest. “You are such a spoilsport, Bruce. I knew you were hiding something in that bag of yours.”

 

She watched them bicker with a strange sense of detachment and startled when she felt a hand on her arm. She turned to Captain Rogers and smiled.

 

“Ms. Foster,” he said. She didn’t correct him. “Barton is asking us to meet Fury on the bridge. Do you think you could…?” He gestured to where Banner and Stark were still arguing. Stark was grabbing at Banner’s bag. His eyes were bright. Banner seemed annoyed. “You know them better than I do. And I don’t think Mr. Stark likes me very much.”

 

“Sure,” she said. “We’ll follow you up.”

 

Rogers gave her a small smile that was almost like a salute and he and Barton moved away. After a few minutes of cajoling she managed to gather Banner and Stark up. She had to lean on them to support her injured foot anyway, so she pulled them towards her. She laced her arms through theirs and tugged them along as they sniped at each other over her head. At some point, their conversation shifted to developing a better energy source for Banner’s strength augmentation device, and she rolled her eyes.

 

Her eyes widened as they entered the bridge.

 

The place was awash with technology. Beeping lights and panels were everywhere. Everything was slick, and most of it seemed to be run on holograms. Agents milled all around, and she had a brief moment to consider that even the jet couldn’t hold a candle to this.

 

Stark slipped from her grasp easily and sauntered over to Fury. Banner took a little longer to disentangle himself. Jane glanced up on him and saw a look of trepidation on his face. He wrung his hands together as he moved. He started to turn around, only to duck his head as he caught sight of two armored agents standing near the door. Jane frowned at him, unsure.

 

Fury didn’t even acknowledge them. “Take her up,” he said aloud.

 

There was a flurry of activity as the crew below him moved to follow his orders. She saw blue lights flashing in warning, and then watched through the huge window as enormous spinning blades appeared to either side of them, flowing up and out of the water. The ocean disappeared below them.

 

She heard Banner suck in a breath behind her before he stumbled forward to stand near Stark. She slumped into a seat at the little table beside Rogers and Barton and tried to take it all in.

 

Barton was picking at his arrows absently, and Rogers seemed even more confused than she was. She watched the way he sat stiffly, his hands folded in front of him, and observed the bridge with a soldier’s eye. It was the same look Thor often gave in new and potentially dangerous situations. Jane was the one who extended her hand to him this time, settling her fingertips lightly on his arm. He jumped.

 

“Hey,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I won’t pretend to understand. When this is over you can visit me in New Mexico. Things are quieter there.” She laughed a little. “Well, sometimes.”

 

“Thirty years,” he said suddenly.

 

Jane frowned at him. “What?”

 

“That’s how long New Mexico’s been a state. Thirty years.” He looked at her. His eyes were wide and grim. “Only, now I suppose it’s been almost a hundred.”

 

She nodded, unsure what to say, and felt a rush of relief as Fury interrupted their little chat.

 

“Your little rag-tag group actually managed to do some good, Stark,” he said. The look on his face said he didn’t want to believe it. He glanced over to Rogers and she saw his face soften for a moment. “We captured the mastermind behind this whole organization. But, we still can’t locate the Tesseract.”

 

Banner sat down gingerly in one chair. He ran a hand over his bare wrist absently as he spoke. “I’ve already got a few plans for how we can track it. It helps that Tony and… I figured it out in the other timeline.”

 

“Yep, we’re pretty much geniuses.” Stark sat beside Banner with a flourish. “Of course, since Loki commandeered my AI he is likely aware of the solution we originally came up with. So we’ve tweaked it a little.”

 

Jane leaned in. “But with the addition of my worm-hole locating algorithm, we should be able to find the Tesseract any time it is activated.”

 

Fury frowned. “We need to locate it before it’s activated.” He glared over at Stark, who was fiddling with his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them. Jane realized with a start that he was missing his phone. “Which leads me to this. How can we trust you, Stark?”

 

Stark looked at him incredulously. “Uh, because literally _everything_ I’ve said thus far has turned out to be right?”

 

“All that tells me is that you’re working with Loki. He seemed to give himself up awfully quickly to you.”

 

“He blasted me through a wall! I mean, it was drywall, but still.” Beside him, Banner tensed. Jane flexed her fingers nervously. “Look, I’ve already told you the truth. I’ve told everyone the truth so many times that I’m sick of it! I’m not explaining the situation to anyone new.” He waved his hand at Fury and leaned back, propping his feet up on the table. “So why don’t you get your little Avengers Initiative speech over with so we can have a band-together montage.”

 

“My what speech?”

 

Stark stared at him for a moment, blinking. He leapt to his feet, running his hands through his hair. “Of course,” he muttered under his breath. Jane could barely hear him. “Of course, that was never a thing. Who would be on it?” He glanced to Rogers, then to Banner. She watched him nervously tap his fingers on his pocket as if searching for some kind of reassurance. He spoke louder. “It’s some dumb idea you had to protect the world from devastation. Unite all peoples, blah, blah, blah.” He was drumming his fingers more and more quickly. “Okay, that’s fine. I know what Loki’s going to do…” He trailed off, considering.

 

After a moment Fury spoke up. “We’ve got a lab for Drs. Banner and Foster. I suppose you can accompany them.”

 

“No, hmm, but yes, okay.” The tapping was getting ridiculously fast, like gunshots. She could feel Rogers tensing beside her.

 

Suddenly, Banner’s hand shot out. He wrapped his fingers around Stark’s and stilled his motions. Stark jumped a little at the unexpected grip. He glanced down at Banner, and Jane glanced too. Banner didn’t seem upset, or even tense like Rogers was. He just looked worried. After a moment he pulled away.

 

Stark stared at him. “To science?” he asked. Banner smiled.

 

“To science.”

 

Jane followed them out, wondering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our first peek at BannerTech! :D
> 
> A little of my thought process for this chapter: The Hong Kong scene with Loki is a parallel to the similar Germany scene in the movie. In the movie, Cap gets a nice speech about how Loki = Hitler. I would have liked to give him a similar speech, but he's still finding his feet (and not quite believing what is happening). Instead, you get parallels with the Vietnam War/Resistance War Against America. The Avengers movie is a story about finding your team. This is a story about managing to survive.


	15. Chapter 15

“Dinner,” Bruce said, and tossed two little ration packets and Jane and Tony. He handed two more to Captain Rogers, who was sitting in the corner of the lab madly scribbling in a sketchbook. Bruce caught sight of a woman with curly hair, sketched out in charcoal, before Rogers slammed the book shut and accepted the rations with a warm smile.

 

“How was your nap?” Tony asked as he tore into his packet.

 

Bruce sat down at the table where Jane and Tony were working and added water to his packet, shaking it a little. “Beneficial,” he said truthfully, not arguing about the ‘nap’ part. “Hopefully it’s enough to keep the other guy in check.”

 

Tony snorted at him. “You’ve got it handled,” he said.

 

“Yes,” Bruce said. “Because I don’t go off half-cocked.”

 

“You did jump out of a plane,” Tony pointed out, as if he hadn’t done the same thing. He munched on a piece of dried meat.

 

Bruce rolled his eyes and turned to Jane. “How is the tracking?”

 

“It’s going about as well as can be expected.” She was eating something that looked like pudding. Judging by the look on her face, it didn’t taste like it. “We’ve successfully integrated my programs and recreated what Tony could remember. We’ve got it going now, but it gets a lot of false data that we have to sift through.”

 

“We managed to make it so it doesn’t always get stuck on your hot Gamma-irradiated self, though, which is a plus.” Tony’s food was disappearing at an alarming rate.

 

Behind him, Bruce heard Rogers opening his second packet. He wondered if he should have brought more. “Sorry about that,” he said sarcastically. “I can’t help my _radiant_ personality.”

 

Tony laughed, but then it strangled as he pulled a little silver packet out of his rations. He stared at it blankly for a moment, his expression distant. Bruce leaned in.

 

“What is it?”

 

“You got me blueberries.”

 

Bruce frowned. “Er, yes. I saw them and thought you might like them. Do you not? You’re not allergic, are you?”

 

Tony seemed to startle out of his trance. He tore open the bag and popped a dried blueberry in his mouth. “No. I love blueberries.” He ate another, and then offered the bag to Bruce.

 

Bruce accepted one. He smiled a little at bright grin Tony gave him in response. “I’ll take a look at the code,” he said. He stood up, rations clutched in his hand, and wandered through the room looking at the screens all around.

 

He strolled around the room munching on dinner and reading the outputs from the various monitors. He blew up the font size on the monitors so that he could actually see it. Jane piped up with a few explanations of what he was looking at. He couldn’t find any errors in the code _per se_ , but he did see a few areas where it could be made more efficient. He changed around a few lines of code and tapped them into the central SHIELD network. Finally, he shrugged.

 

“I can’t really see any other way to make it faster. Not with the tools we’ve got.”

 

“Yeah, in the other timeline we ran it through some of my personal servers. Much more efficient than this SHIELD stuff.” Tony placed his legs up on the table. His metal boots caught the light. He seemed to contemplate the metallic bag of berries for a moment. “But that’s fine. We can focus on more important things like how to disarm all of SHIELD’s Tesseract-based weapons.”

 

Bruce heard something snap behind him. He turned and saw Rogers staring over at Tony, a broken pencil clutched in his hand. “What makes you think they have Tessearct weaponry?” Bruce asked after a moment, not taking his eyes off of Rogers.

 

“Because they already did. A lot of it, too. All this great stuff firing red lasers and blue lasers—well, blue lasers, anyway, with enough force to cut through a man at fifty paces. They plan to use it like some sort of nuclear deterrent. They can just wave their big, hulking laser guns at any other country that looks at them funny. They somehow think that this _won’t_ lead to an arms race for bigger and better weapons so that we can all blow each other to kingdom-come.”

 

Rogers was growing more and more tense with each of Tony’s words. Bruce could smell a haze of fear wafting through the room. Bruce thought, not for the first time, that the war was still yesterday for Captain Rogers.

 

Tony continued. “And I mean, I thought _I_ was bad. Apparently killing people is a niche market that will always be filled. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be hit with one of those things, but they seem to—“

 

“Tony,” Bruce said once, warningly, and turned back to face him.

 

Tony’s mouth hung open as if he planned to say something else. Then his eyes shifted to Rogers, hunched in the corner over his sketch pad. His mouth slammed shut. When he opened it again, his words were more measured. Bruce felt a tension leave his shoulders that he hadn’t realized was there. “So we should stop them,” Tony said simply.

 

“I don’t pay you to sit around knitting tea cozies,” Fury said as he strolled through the door to their lab. Instantly, the room was back on alert. His eye flashed as he surveyed everyone eating. “What can you give me?”

 

“I’m not getting paid, are you getting paid?” Tony looked at Bruce, his eyes wide with mock-affront. “I am wounded, Director. I made all these cozies for you, too.”

 

Bruce stifled a nervous laugh at Fury’s indignant expression. Fury growled at the two of them. “I don’t have time for your games, Stark. This isn’t your playground.”

 

Tony seemed to sober at the thought. “No. I guess it isn’t.”

 

Jane cut in. “We don’t have a lot for you yet, Director. The program is running and we’re sifting out the false positives. Dr. Banner has just looked at it and confirmed that it is searching for the proper Gamma-ray signature.”

 

Fury grunted. He turned his attention to Rogers. “And you?”

 

“Oh, Director.” Rogers seemed to snap to attention even though he was still sitting. “I was, uh, drawing. Sir.”

 

Fury rolled his eye. “Get down to the training bay, boy. You’re our second heaviest hitter and I won’t have you getting soft.”

 

Bruce felt his heart clench, knowing instantly who the _first_ heavy hitter was. He glanced at Rogers, whose eyes were downcast as he closed his book again and stood, tucking it under his arm. “Yes, sir.”

 

“Oh, don’t listen to him, Cap,” Tony said suddenly. Tony was on his feet in a second, clanking over to the two of them. “Steve’s our moral support. We need him here. Anyway, where’s Clint?”

 

The non sequitur didn’t seem to faze Fury at all. “Interrogating the prisoner.”

 

Tony’s eyes widened. Bruce recognized the look instantly—fear. “He what? Why him? Send literally anyone else.”

 

“Agent Barton is the best we’ve got right now,” Fury said. His voice dipped low. “And I don’t take orders from you, Stark.”

 

Tony seemed to consider for a moment. Bruce watched him scramble through a range of emotions before settling back on fear, then crushing disappointment. “Natasha is compromised, isn’t she?”

 

Fury blinked, and for the first time Bruce registered surprise. It was quickly replaced by anger. Bruce moved a little closer to Tony in solidarity as Fury spoke. “What do you know about Agent Romanov? You need to stay out of our systems, Stark, or we’ll toss you out of the airlock. I don’t give a damn what Dr. Banner says.”

 

Bruce growled. It just sort of spilled out from between his lips, and as soon as he’d done it he regretted it. He could feel everyone’s eyes turn suddenly to him and he ducked his head shyly at the sudden attention. “I would advise against that, Director Fury,” he said after a moment, trying to sound as calm as possible.

 

He felt Tony’s hand on his arm, just a light touch, and then he dropped it. “I wasn’t in your systems, anyway. I don’t need to be, to read you.”

 

Fury grumbled, but seemed to know when to retreat. “Let me know when you have something.” He turned on his heel and began to march out.

 

“Actually,” Tony called out, catching Fury midway between the lab and the hallway. He stalled in the door frame. Bruce glanced up and locked eyes with Tony. “I may have something right now.”

 

“Oh?” Fury moved back into the room.

 

Tony was watching Bruce as he spoke. “It just occurred to me that this Loki is just as much a diva as the other one. He’s going to look for some place big and flashy to bring down his army. Someplace where he can make a statement. Highly populated, a lot of people. A lot of technology to crush under his boot.” He seemed to consider. “Maybe in New York?”

 

Bruce watched as Fury and Jane exchanged a little look. “Someplace big and flashy with a lot of technology, in New York?” Jane said. “Sounds like Stane International.”

 

Tony whirled away from them. His eyes were wide and Bruce stumbled back as well, hit with a sudden scent of _fear_ that washed over him and threatened to overload his controls. “Say that again,” Tony said, his voice weak.

 

“Stane International.” Jane was standing. Bruce leaned against the wall behind him and clutched at his head, the fear in the room too much for him to bear. “Tony, what’s—“

 

The door slid open and Tony rushed into the hallway. Bruce saw his back in retreat, the tense line of his neck and shoulders. Bruce tried to get his feet under him enough to go after him. Rogers beat him to it.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://adenil-umano.tumblr.com/)

“Where is Agent Coulson?” Clint consulted his tablet.

 

“Will you _ever_ shut up?”

 

“Agent Diego?” Clint continued down the list. “Agent Romanov? Dr. Selvig?” He read each name in a slow monotone and watched as Loki twitched. When he got to the bottom of the list, he started again from the top. It was his favorite method of interrogation; bore them to death. It was something Phil had taught him.

 

“Be silent, mortal!” Loki was on his feet again. He slammed his fists against the clear wall.

 

Clint glanced up at him, nonplussed. “Where is Agent Coulson?”

 

When they had first begun, Loki had spun his little lies like a gossamer web before him. He had tried to trick and play Clint to lure him into his web. But Stark had already told them all of Loki’s tricks, and so Clint avoided them deftly. Slowly, Loki had become belligerent until he was reduced to the man before him demanding some change in tactics.

 

Clint delighted in driving Loki mad. He hoped Natasha would be proud.

 

“Where is Agent Romanov?”

 

“With all _the rest_!” Loki shouted. It was the first change in dialogue, and Clint rewarded it.

 

“Good,” he said, and it was the only word he’d said that didn’t boil down to someone’s name. Loki startled at the sound before turning away, his cape twisting dramatically. Clint didn’t roll his eyes, even though he wanted to.

 

“Where is Dr. Selvig?”

 

Loki let out a deep, put-upon sigh. “Suppose I do tell you. Would you release me into open air? Return me to Asgard?”

 

“Where is Agent Yao?”

 

He went through the list five more times, with Loki muttering himself to distraction the entire time. To be honest, Clint wasn’t really even sure what they were trying to get out of him. They’d had no choice but to accept his surrender, but couldn’t really expect him to _mean_ anything he said. Tony had told them plenty. They knew of the other’s plan to unleash the Hulk, and so they watched the skies and locked away the scepter. If he was smart, Loki would have come up with a different plan. But Clint couldn’t see anything better than unleashing the Hulk in a pressurized aircraft.

 

Suddenly, Loki looked up. A slow grin spread across his face. Clint didn’t frown externally. “Ah,” Loki said. He took a deep breath like he smelled a freshly baked apple pie. “Such beautiful fear.”

 

“Where is Agent Coulson?”

 

Loki glanced at him in amusement. “Where is Tony Stark?”

 

Clint nodded, once, then turned and walked away.

 

*

 

Steve rested a hand on Banner’s shoulder. “Get your breath back, Doctor,” he said, feeling himself slip naturally into a leadership role. Banner relaxed under his grip and he pushed away.

 

He strolled out the door, leaving Fury to clean up the mess he had caused. Stark was easy to follow—he sure made enough noise. Steve took comfort in the cool weight of his shield on his back and his notebook clutched under his arm. He closed his eyes briefly, picturing all the faces he had left behind. It still felt unreal, uncertain. He needed to commit them to paper, before he forgot them. But it would have to wait.

 

There was a crash. An agent went scurrying away. Steve pushed past him and into the side room. He pursed his lips together and examined the destruction.

 

All around were half-broken technological marvels that Steve couldn’t even begin to understand. Shards of glass stuck out at various angles, wires tangled, and the smell of ozone hung in the air. Amidst it all was Stark frantically searching for something. Steve saw a small glass-and-metal box with a hole in it clutched in the man’s hand.

 

“Stark, what are you—“

 

The fist to his face was a little unexpected, but it hardly damaged him. He saw the frantic, terrified look on Stark’s face and instantly knew what the man was experiencing. It was the same images that flashed in his head each night, waking him up in cold sweats. Flashbacks and memories of danger that could feel so real, so physical, that you could honestly believe your friends were dying around you and your heart was plucked from its nest.

 

He let Stark lay into him for a moment, feeling each muffled punch against his chest. He only stopped him when he saw the man’s knuckles pricked with blood. He caught up Stark’s wrists and held him for a moment until he stopped struggling. He didn’t relax, exactly, but some bit of awareness came back to his eyes.

 

Steve wasn’t sure what to say, so he said the first thing that came to his mind. “You scared Dr. Banner.”

 

Stark slumped a little before pulling away. “I’m looking for a keycard,” he said, completely ignoring what had just occurred.

 

“What for?” Steve decided he could play along for a bit. He began to shuffle through the destroyed equipment.

 

“To break into the weapons cache. I’m wrecking it. All of it.”

 

“Is that all?” Steve straightened and cast a grin at Stark. It was the grin that could set men at ease; make them feel like it was worth fighting another day. Make them believe they would live to see their girl back home. “I’ll just punch through the door.”

 

Stark laughed. He stood and headed out the door. “Forgot you could do that.”

 

Steve fell into step beside him. “It’s a pretty handy skill.”

 

He led him deep into the bowels of the ship. Stark seemed to know exactly where to go as they walked through the twisting, winding hallways. They avoided agents when they could, and Stark smooth-talked the rest, until they arrived at a little out-of-the-way door.

 

“Punch here,” Stark said, indicating a small box on the wall.

 

Steve did so, and as his fist connected the door slid open.

 

They strolled in. Stark seemed relaxed. He had his hands in his pockets as he surveyed the little room filled with metallic and wooden crates. He hummed a bit to himself and Steve moved to open one of them. He stared blankly at the weapon hidden within it, hardly comprehending what he saw.

 

“You know,” Stark said conversationally. Steve looked up and saw him running a hand over the logo on one of the boxes. _Stane International_ , it said. “The other you didn’t like me one bit.”

 

Steve frowned. “In this other timeline thing? This all sounds a little ridiculous.”

 

“More ridiculous than making a super soldier in a basement? More ridiculous than a guy’s face melting off? More ridiculous than all of the other things that happened to you today?”

 

Steve had to give him that one. “Why didn’t he like you?”

 

“Probably because I am a pretentious asshole who uses money to get what I want, and you’re a solider with a stick so far up his ass that they’re flying the flag from it.” Stark shrugged flippantly, and Steve had to bite back the anger he felt at the words. Yeah, he could see why he might not like Stark. “But,” Stark went on. “I think mostly it’s because I’m not my father.”

 

“Howard,” Steve said, and it wasn’t a question.

 

“Yeah.” Stark began to fiddle with one of the weapons. Steve watched as the power went out, the little blue light winking from existence. “I dunno. Maybe since I was never born he didn’t turn into a righteous, posturing asshole who only had eyes for his One Great Experiment, but I doubt it.” He took another gun offline, then another. “Somehow I think I’m just not that special.”

 

Steve shifted from one foot to the other, struggling not to rise to Howard’s defense. It would have been easy, but he knew it would have been just as useless. “Is there a way I can help with this?”

 

Stark glanced up at him, and then back at the weapon in his hands. It was a huge monstrosity of a gun. He turned it off and replaced it. “Let’s see if we can find a way to take them all offline at once. They must be drawing power from a central source.”

 

“How d’you figure?”

 

“That’s just how Tesseract power works.” Stark began moving through the boxes in the large room. “Anyone who’s ever had access to, and could figure out, the Tesseract can draw power from it from anywhere. They just need to funnel it to the right location. That’s how Loki can use his scepter even when he isn’t anywhere near the thing. And how all these weapons still work. It’s all pretty basic string theory stuff, really.”

 

“String theory?”

 

“Long story.” Stark waved his hands. “I’ll tell you when we aren’t trying to save the world.”

 

Steve followed him into the depths of the room. Gradually, the room grew dimmer and dimmer until their only source of light was the strange blue glow from Stark’s chest. Steve found himself frowning at it.

 

“Is that Tesseract-based, too?”

 

Stark laughed. He slapped a hand over his chest. “Not exactly. Good old-fashioned arc reactor technology.” He glanced over. “I think blue is just a really common color. Kind of soothing, don’t you think?”

 

“I guess.” Steve shrugged, but he didn’t agree. To him, blue meant death. It meant Nazis and HYDRA and bodies disappearing like the night sky. They continued walking for a while, their feet clanking on the metal, until Steve gradually realized that there was another blue glow in the room.

 

“What’s that?” Beside him, Stark paused. They both turned to look, and then moved towards the source of the light.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Stark said lowly as the approached the scepter Loki had wielded against them. It was placed on two hooks on the wall and glowed richly and fully. Barton’s arrow had been removed, and the scepter was at full power. “They never intended to lock it away. Goddammit, I am an idiot for believing them.”

 

He started to reach for it, and Steve stopped him. “Should you really touch it? You said earlier that just being near it could cloud your mind.”

 

“Not mine,” Stark said grimly. “Guess I’m just special. Never worked in the other universe, even when we were about to beat each other into the deck plate.” His fingers closed around the scepter and he pulled it away from the wall.

 

Stark stilled, cradling the scepter. His eyes seemed to fall and Steve felt his adrenaline spike through the roof. The scepter _spoke_.

 

“Good evening, Sir. Captain Rogers.” The voice was metallic and British. Steve had to close his eyes at the rush of memories it brought. He opened them and saw Stark, looking just as unbalanced. “Initiating Urðr Protocol. Subprogram one: Obtain Captain America.”


	17. Chapter 17

Bruce could feel the worry in the air, heavy and acrid, emanating from Fury and Jane like the haze of a hot summer’s day. It clung to him and he could hardly breathe. He pushed away from the wall after what felt like an eternity and stumbled past them, leaving Jane to deal with the Director.

 

Outside the lab, the helicarrier was a hum of activity around him. But he was alone.

 

He hardly realized that he’d donned his back pack again until he found himself compulsively playing with the loose threads on one strap. He traced a finger over the thread, pulling it flush against the flesh beneath his thumbnail. He felt it cut against the skin there, and he hitched in a breath. He dropped his hand to his side and looked around the hallway.

 

He didn’t know how long he stood there, waiting for something to happen. He thought about looking for Tony and Rogers, but whenever it flitted across his mind he would just turn his head to the side as if he expected Tony to be standing there already.

 

Clint brushed past him, and he startled into action.

 

“Where are we going?” he asked, falling into step with the archer.

 

“To find Stark.”

 

Bruce nodded to himself, and then stumbled as an explosion rocked the ship.

 

Immediately, there was noise and action. Clint broke into a run and he ran after. A blue light began to strobe. A woman’s voice came over the speaker system. _Hull breach on deck four. Evacuate deck four._

 

“Towards the explosion, then?”

 

Clint nodded grimly. They rushed down the hallway, Clint with his bow poised and ready, Bruce clutching at his pack. Clint led them deep as other agents streamed past and all around, bumbling into Bruce with haphazard shoulders and sharp elbows. He had to close his eyes for a moment, relying on the sound of Clint’s breathing and the stench of smoke to guide him.

 

He opened his eyes. He could see the tear in the side of the ship, gaping open to expose the black sky beyond the walls. Standing before it, Rogers and Tony, both staring out into it with their hair whipping in the breeze.

 

“Tony!”

 

Tony spun around, and Bruce had a brief moment to register the scepter in his hands before Clint was firing an arrow. It bounced off Rogers’ shield and went flying out into the open air, disappearing from sight.

 

“Subprogram eight: Obtain Dr. Banner.” A British voice floated over them.

 

“Bruce, Clint, _run_.” Tony’s eyes were a wild brown as the scepter thrummed in his grasp.

 

He took a step back at Tony’s words. He saw Clint dash forward, another arrow bouncing off of Rogers’ shield and exploding in the air above him. Rogers grunted and was on Clint in a flash, his fist shooting out. Clint blocked the blow aside with his bow and whipped around, kicking Rogers hard in the face. It hardly seemed to faze him as they tumbled into each other, Rogers a flurry of limbs and flashes of his shield, Clint desperately trying to pull back far enough to fire—because he _had_ a knife, and Bruce could see it at his hip but Rogers was so _fast_.

 

He saw the arc reactor in Tony’s chest flare a violent sapphire as he raised the scepter.

 

Bruce threw the nearest item—a hunk metal that may once have been a gun—straight at him. It clanged into him and Tony fell backwards, landing with a thump. The blast of Tesseract energy went wide into the ceiling, blowing another hole in the ship.

 

He could see fear on Tony’s face as he dug into his backpack and pulled on his shield emitter bracers over his watch. He estimated he had ten hits of energy before the battery was spent. Bruce rushed forward as he swung his pack back over his shoulder. Tony’s face contorted.

 

“Bruce, get away.” He raised the scepter and swung it at Bruce. Bruce blocked it with a sudden blue-green shield. One.

 

“Tony, what are you doing?” He could hear the sounds of Clint and Rogers fighting. He flicked his wrist and spun out a disk of energy like a Frisbee. It flew into Rogers, knocking him off his feet for a moment and giving Clint enough time to back up to a good firing distance. Two.

 

“It’s the scepter.” Bruce blocked another blow. Three. “I can’t control my body. I already did something to Steve.” A fourth blow.

 

Bruce scampered away as the helicarrier lurched to one side. He tried to keep his breathing under control, but it was difficult. It wasn’t really the fight, or the situation. He could handle that; he had trained himself to handle that. But the smell of fear so strong on another person was something he had never been able to prepare for. He was used to people being afraid _of_ him, but afraid _for_ him was a different matter. It had him off kilter, unbalanced. He slowed his breathing. Calm, cool, collected.

 

Tony’s boots kept him rigidly to the floor. Bruce tossed another energy disk at Rogers. Rogers blocked it with his shield, but Clint was able to sink a dart into his neck. Bruce knew it was laced with tranquilizer, but Rogers only shrugged and ripped it out, casting it aside. Five.

 

Bruce whipped around in time to block another blow from Tony. Six. He took stock of the way Tony’s hand clenched around the scepter, never dropping it for a second as he pulled back again and again. Seven. Eight.

 

The helicarrier lurched again and Bruce rolled away with it. He tipped through the hole in the wall and grabbed tightly to the side of the carrier. He could hear Tony walking towards him, his boots loud even over the sound of rushing wind. He glanced left and saw a ladder, and made a grab for it.

 

He rushed up the side of the carrier to a landing deck just above. He couldn’t see Clint anymore—could only hope the other man could take care of himself. He turned in time to see Tony walking up the side of the ship, his boots holding him horizontally.

 

Tony looked determined. “Bruce, knock me off the side of the platform.”

 

“What?” Bruce dodged that blow. He could see Tony struggling for control of his own body. He knew that struggle well. He felt that struggle right then, in that moment, within his own skin. He told himself that he wasn’t in mortal peril. “No way.” He didn’t need the other guy.

 

“I’ll be fine,” Tony lied. Bruce couldn’t dodge the next blow, and it landed solidly on his shield. Nine.

 

“No.” He had to close his eyes, to center himself, and it was enough that the next blow was unexpected. It knocked him to the side in a heap and he slipped off the edge of the platform. His hands scrambled for purchase and he gripped the ledge tightly, feeling his feet dangling in open air below.

 

He could barely breathe in the thin atmosphere, in the thin, tenuous hold he held over himself. He watched Tony approach.

 

“Then you need to jump!” Tony said. “You’ll be okay, but if I touch you with this thing—”

 

Bruce looked at the scepter in Tony’s hands. Tony turned it on him, and the blue glow intensified. It seemed to stab out of the scepter, out of Tony, at all angles, leaking into the air. It swam green for a moment in Bruce’s eyes. Calm, cool, collected. And maybe it was the wind, whipping the smell of Tony’s fear away, or the grim determination in Tony’s eyes, but he _was_ calm. He tried to think when he had decided to trust Tony Stark (he thought it was when he jumped out of the plane, but maybe it started when Tony handed him his pack in a crater).

 

“Would you jump after me again?”

 

Tony was almost upon him. “Of course.” He raised the scepter. Bruce saw a flash of metal wire from beneath his gloves, disappearing into his sleeves.

 

 Ten.

 

Bruce blocked the blow with one hand as he swung his legs up. He let each motion flow into the next as he moved. He was meditative, slow, and it took only one breath in and one breath out to step into Tony. One hand knocked into Tony’s wrist, bending it painfully sideways, knocking the scepter off kilter enough for Bruce to jump on him. He pressed too close for Tony to touch him with the head of the scepter as he shoved his hands up under Tony’s shirts and yanked out the wires there.

 

Everything went dim and dark as Tony’s arc reactor faded to its normal level of brightness. Bruce saw Tony’s eyes widen in surprise. The scepter clattered to the ground.

 

“You really are a god dammed genius.”

 

Bruce laughed once, breathily, automatically, and extricated himself. They stood together for a moment. Tony was running his hands over his body, muttering to himself about magical engineers, and Bruce just wobbled quietly and tried to remember how to feel. The other guy turned away, like a flame bending backwards in the wind, taking his emotions with him.

 

Tony took a step forward and pulled off his over-shirt. He wrapped it around the handle of the scepter and picked it up. The staff made a little whirring noise, and Bruce blinked.

 

“Urðr Protocol offline. Please reinitialize.”

 

“Was that Jarvis?” Bruce felt a little blank. He looked at Tony’s grim face and tried to remember what emotions were like.

 

He snapped back to attention at the sound of a sharp cry from below. A man’s voice. Loud enough to be heard over whipping wind and ringing ears. He descended down the ladder, Tony rushing after him, the scepter clutched through cloth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can ask me questions about this fic on [Tumblr](http://adenil-umano.tumblr.com/ask)


	18. Chapter 18

Jane was shaking when Fury finally left. He cast a disdainful look at her over his shoulder as he went. “Just find me the Tessearct,” he ordered.  
  
She stood there for a long moment, considering the screens around her diligently attempting to locate that tiny, blue cube. She could see Gamma radiation signatures, troop movements, weather calculators, all lined up in easy rows. She could see, in the echo of her mind, Stark’s face when she’d mentioned Stane International, and Bruce’s reaction. She could see the anger of Fury’s face as he told her Stane would _never_ allow such a thing. When the rest had abandoned her, she had faced the full brunt of his rage for suggesting such a thing.

 

Then she closed her eyes, and saw Thor’s face smiling at her.

 

Jane left the blinking monitors and the smell of fear behind and made her way to the bowels of the ship.

 

It didn’t take her very long to find the place where Loki was kept, and being Thor’s girlfriend had its advantages as she slipped past the guards posted there. The room was dark and sterile. Everything gunmetal grey and black. The only spot of color was Loki himself, tucked behind transparent aluminum, his back turned to her.

 

“I thought Agent Barton would be here.” She took a few measured steps into the room.

 

Loki shrugged, but didn’t turn. “He had another engagement.”

 

She took another step forward. She stood beside a control panel and tried not to look at the red lever beneath glass as she spoke. “Tell me where Thor is.”

 

He spun around, and for a moment she saw anger across his face. Then he softened, simpered, as a smile took the place of rage. “I am not his keeper.”

 

“But he is yours?” She stepped forward again and placed her hand on the console for balance. She watched as his eyes flicked down to where her hand lay, pressed against metal, then back to her eyes.

 

“Perhaps,” he said. He splayed out his hands, palms up, and smirked at her. “But he is oft hard-headed. I cannot sway him away from his goals. His goal that day was my destruction, and it lead him far afield.”

 

“Is he safe?” Her fingers clenched at the metal.

 

“He is a god,” he said. His face darkened for a moment. “Would you question us?”

 

“Heaven forbid.” She smirked back at him. “Now. The Tesseract. It’s at Stane International?”

 

Something strange flashed across his face for a moment. He opened his mouth to answer, and she could already see a lie forming on his lips when they were both knocked off their feet as the helicarrier dipped hard to the left.

 

“Hull breach on deck four,” came a voice over the comms as lights began to strobe emergency blue. “Evacuate deck four.”

 

Jane cursed as she stood up again. Loki was already on his feet. He looked down at her with a patient smile.

 

“You are surrounded by many heroes, _Lady_ Jane,” he said, his voice dripping with danger at her title. “A man set to shoot the hair off my head from one hundred paces. The most powerful boy your science has ever created. And two intelligent minds. One wears his bravery on his chest. The other conceals it. What are you to that, Lady Jane?”

 

Her body tensed at his words. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her with a wave of his hand. “Ah! Intelligence, then. But what does that give you, if you have not the swiftness nor the bravery to back it up? You came to me because you are afraid. You could not bring yourself to defend those you believe you care for. You left it to those you knew to be _better than yourself_.”

 

The ship rocked again. She could feel it losing altitude.

 

“You are no hero. Not compared to these men.” He stepped forward, inches away from the wall of his cage. She could see in his wild eyes determination and glee. “Your government only keeps you _alive_ for fear of enraging Thor. You are nothing without him.” He laughed. “In a way, aren’t we all nothing without our gods?”

 

“You’re right,” she said thickly. Loki seemed surprised. He quirked an eyebrow at her and she stood a little straighter. “You’re right; I’m not a hero. I’m not supposed to be. I’m just a normal person. But you’re also wrong about something.” Beneath her, the ship shuddered. “I didn’t come here because I was afraid. I came here because _you_ are.”

 

Loki took a step back from her words. It was her turn to laugh. “I know where the Tesseract is, Loki.”  
  
He glanced up, looked at the door behind her. “It is of no consequence. You will not tell anyone.”

 

Confused, she looked behind her. She saw the doors swish open and she relaxed. “Steve? What are you—” She turned to face him, and noticed piercing blue eyes far, far too late.

 

  
*

 

Clint was on the floor, but at least he was alone and alive when they got there.

 

Tony knelt by his side and slipped his arm over his shoulder. He felt Bruce move to his other side and together they picked him up. He was limp, but breathing, as they moved out of the room.

 

The scepter bumped into his leg as they walked, and he tried not to think about it. But Tony could never really _not_ think about something, so inside he was mostly thinking _wow_ and _so cool_ and strings of numbers and ideas for how he could access Jarvis inside the scepter. He wondered how an AI could even be stored in something he had to admit was pretty much magic. Jarvis had gone silent after his last request for reinitializing, and Tony tried valiantly to ignore the sense of trepidation that silence brought along with the scientific theories roiling in his head.

 

And he still had no idea how Loki had controlled him through it. Now that the wires leading to his repulsors were disconnected, his body was his own again. But it terrified him to think that it could happen again. That he could be the one to turn a friend, as he had turned Steve.

 

“I don’t think Loki was ever trying to actually defeat us,” Tony said aloud to break the silence with himself. He stared straight ahead as they walked. “He wanted to split us up. Make us directionless.”

 

He glanced to his side. Bruce was staring at him. He had to look away. Tony didn’t know what to say as they moved down the hall. If it hadn’t been for the way the helicarrier tipped and swayed, or the way the agents rushed around them, he could have believed they were just on a walk home. Two friends helping a buddy down the road. But they weren’t.

 

“Steve said something strange when I… He said that everything was _clear_ now.” Tony laughed to himself.

 

Tony never really stopped talking, but he couldn’t hear himself anymore. He must have cracked a joke somewhere because Bruce laughed, even though his face was still a grim line of determination. He wanted to ask how the other guy was doing, how _Bruce_ was doing, but he couldn’t turn off the way his mouth rambled and joked. By the time they made it back to the bridge he could see Bruce relaxing, accepting the situation. And Tony was relaxing, too.

 

Then Fury was on them like a bad rash and it all flew out the window.

 

“Stark!” he barked at them as they entered. Tony ignored him as they rested Clint in a chair and Bruce began to examine him. He came back in as Fury shouted, “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?”

 

Tony shrugged a shoulder at him. “I thought we already established that I don’t know how to knit.”

 

“I don’t have time for your games, Stark! You disappear and now I find you back with _my_ agent—” He paused, and Tony followed the look of his eye downward to the scepter he was still clutching.

 

“Oh yeah!” Tony said brightly. “I was just picking up a few things from the store. You know how it is when you have a craving for potentially world-ending doomsday devices.”

 

“It looks like Clint just got hit with one of his own tranq darts,” Bruce said suddenly. They both looked at him, and Bruce bowed his head and began to tug at his fingers. “He should be fine.”

 

Fury growled before Tony could let the relief of that statement wash over him. “Banner! We have hostiles on board this ship. We don’t have time for you to play doctor.”

 

Tony watched as Bruce clenched and unclenched his hands. “What do you want from me, Director? Are you going to order me to suit up?” At Fury’s insistent look he just threw his hands in the air. “Well _that is not going to **happen**_.” His voice grew deeper and darker with each word, and Tony knew he should step back from anger like that but all he could do was lean forward as Bruce grappled with himself.

 

Finally, “I’ve had enough near-misses today,” Bruce said, and turned back to Clint.

 

“Then get out of my sight.” Fury was having none of it. “We have hostiles in SHIELD uniforms, and I don’t have time to babysit—“

 

“Wait,” Tony said. He held up a hand and just spoke over Fury. “Why didn’t you announce that? You announced it last time. In the other timeline.”

 

“We did announce it.” He took a step back, glanced over his shoulder. All around him agents were nodding. In a flash Fury snapped back to attention. “You and you,” he pointed. “On foot. Distribute my general call. Lock down this bridge! Get the systems back online. Stark. If this is another one of your signal jams…”

 

“Hey, that wasn’t even me the first time!” When Fury furrowed his brow he went on. “Did you think—I _said_ to-to Coulson that it wasn’t me.”

 

He was looking right at Fury, so he saw as the other man’s eye widened in a one-sided mirror of his own as it struck them both what that meant, that it had been _Loki_ to block signals the first time. At his side, the scepter vibrated. He had a moment, then, to turn in time to see Bruce frowning at him, Clint’s eyes fluttering open, and the door being blown off its hinges by a grenade.

 

Another grenade followed in a slow, lazy arc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did Steve get to Loki's cell so fast? Answer: Occam's Razor.


	19. Chapter 19

Fury was getting real tired of this shit.

 

He expressed his anger by shooting the first person to try and break through the door. The man tumbled back, a grenade slipped from his fingers, and Barton was up in a flash to knock it aside with his bow. It exploded harmlessly against a panel, sending smoke and sparks into the air.

 

“Stark, get down!” He fired another shot, then another. Around him agents were scrambling to lay up defensive positions. He strolled forward as the insurgents tried to move the body in the door and he knocked the table on its side.

 

Barton was beside him. Fury fired another shot over the edge of the table and watched as Banner tried desperately to pull Stark down and out of the line of fire.

 

“I’m moving to higher ground, Director,” Barton said flatly. He palmed an arrow and made to move, but Fury shot out a hand.

 

“No. Get these civilians out of here.”

 

Barton nodded. He stood. A bullet grazed his sleeve. He pulled back his bowstring and an arrow flew straight and true into the shooter’s shoulder. “Banner. Stark. With me.”

 

Stark seemed dazed, but Banner complied. Fury had to hand it to that deep breathing crap; it was really helping Banner stay focused. Banner wrapped a hand around Stark’s wrist and yanked him towards Barton.

 

Fury noted the way Banner stood between Stark and the line of fire. Two insurgents burst through the door. He felled one. Barton felled the other. Four more entered. The three men rushed down the gangplank as Barton shouted directions.

 

“Wait!” Stark was shouting over the din of bullets and destruction. “We have to go back. Jane—and Steve!”

 

Banner just pushed him through an open door and Barton followed, firing a scattershot arrow in his wake.

 

Fury growled. His movements were jerky. He swung around. His clip emptied. He punched through one man. A fist connected with his face and he stumbled back. They swarmed the bridge in a flash and he was out.

 

*

 

“We’ve come a long way together, haven’t we Obie?”

 

The other man laughed and took a sip of his drink. He had offered; Loki had declined. “It’s say that’s an understatement. I know a good thing when I see one, even if it’s dropped on me from the sky in some backwater state.”

 

Loki leveled him with an even stare. “You words are… humbling. And now, our contract moves towards fulfillment.”

 

“Yes. I’m quite interested to see this new technology you’ve promised me.”

 

A ghost of a smile graced Loki’s face. “Quite. And I shall enjoy delivering it to you. The Tesseract is beautifully inspirational.”

 

Obie took another long sip of his drink. “I’ll say. Everything the great Obadiah Stane creates puts weapons tech forward another ten years.” He laughed a little as if he were making a clever joke. Loki didn’t find it funny. “But I get the feeling you didn’t call me here to reminisce.”

 

“No.” Loki smiled down at him. “I did not. Perhaps I will indulge with you.” He splayed out his fingers at the drink clutched in Obie’s hand. Obie smiled up at him and rose, moving to the bar and pouring a drink with affected ease.

 

Everything about the man was affected: from his so-called genius down to his debonair attitude. All for the enjoyment of Loki. Mortals were so easy to deal with. Promise them a few glowing sticks and they would do anything. He smiled as Obie handed him the drink.

 

“Now. Onto business.”

 

“S-stop.”

 

Loki whipped around, a glare storming across his features. His mood soured as he rushed his gaze over the squirming Dr. Foster, clutched in the hands of Captain Rogers. Rogers had a hand on the back of her throat as her eyes fluttered open. “I told you to keep her quiet,” Loki said, low and dangerous.

 

Rogers bowed his head. “Sorry, sir.”

 

“It is no matter.” Loki strolled over to Foster, Obie momentarily abandoned. “Tell me, Doctor. Why do you still resist?”

 

She glared up at him. Her eyes were wet as she clutched at Rogers’ strong grip. Loki could see bruises forming beneath his fingertips. “Because I hate you.”

 

Loki pulled back and splayed a hand across his chest in mock affront. “Now, now, Dr. Foster!” he exclaimed. “You’d best keep your tone in check, or you’ll not live long enough to see him again.” He saw by the look on her face that she knew precisely who he was talking about. “Now be silent, or I shall have your Captain America snap your scrawny neck.”

 

He turned back to Obie, his cape billowing. He smiled as though he was embarrassed. “My apologies. The in-laws.” He twirled the hand clutching his glass in a _you know how it is_ gesture. Obie laughed. “My dear friend, Obie,” he went on. “I have but one final thing to ask from you.”

 

“Of course.”

 

Loki smiled. “You will find a gift from me atop your tower. There, you will wait for one of the brightest minds your world has to offer.” The unspoken _paltry though he may be_ hung in the air. “You are to wipe him from this earth, and I will rain knowledge and power upon you.”

 

Obie knocked back the rest of his drink. “Certainly, my good man.” He placed his empty glass on the counter. “Will I know him?”

 

“You will,” Loki said. “Tony Stark has a very… _distinctive_ presence.”

 

*

 

“Where are we going, Stark?” Clint flipped a half-dozen switches and threw the engine into power. He tipped the controls forward and began to taxi the quinjet out of the bay.

 

“Back there! Jane and Steve are still there.”

 

Clint glanced over his shoulder and watched as Banner forcibly manhandled Stark into a seat. Stark pushed against him and flailed, seemingly oblivious to the way Banner’s eyes were closed in concentration as he breathed.

 

“We’re not going back. Where are we going?”

 

Behind the jet there was an explosion. A sea of hostiles poured into the bay. Clint pushed the panel to max and they rocketed forward, leaving the men in the dust. The bay doors were only half open and Clint had to pilot the ship a hair’s breadth from the floor to slip out. _One for the highlight reel_ , he thought to himself.

 

“Turn this thing around!” Stark shot up as they breeched the ship walls into open air. Banner stumbled back. “I’m not leaving _anyone_ behind again.”

 

“They aren’t _your_ problem, Stark.” Clint pointed the nose of the jet down, deciding that getting as far away as possible was the first priority.

 

“Yes they are! They’re _mine_. I _made_ them my problem but refusing to stop existing. We’re going back, Clint. Right now. Turn around or I’ll—“

 

“Tony.” Banner’s voice was calm and low. “You need to stop.”

 

Clint glanced back as Banner wrapped his hands around Stark’s wrists and tried to hold him still. He realized that Stark had been trying to access a panel, and his mood soured.

 

“Are you trying to _guilt_ me with the other guy?” Stark laughed. It sounded manic. “Don’t even try, Bruce. I know you’ve got a lid on it.”

 

“Any other time,” Banner said mildly. “I might agree with you. If this were a few days ago and you hadn’t…and I had never _met_ …” He closed his eyes. “I don’t have a lid on this, Tony. Sit down. Please.”

 

Stark wavered for a moment. Clint saw indecision in his eyes. Finally, blissfully, he sat. “Stane International,” he muttered. Clint watched as Banner wavered again at his words.

 

“All right. We’re going to New York.”

 

“Is this a bad time?”

 

Clint had his bow drawn and an arrow nocked before the sentence finished but _damn_ , Coulson was good and he hadn’t even heard him approach. He almost fired; he almost let loose that arrow but something stilled his hand. He stood there a moment, dumbly, before finally realizing it was Coulson’s eyes. Calm and green-blue, as they normally were.

 

Coulson smiled stiffly. Stark let out what sounded like a sob. “Could someone explain what’s going on?” Coulson asked as he slowly raised his hands in response to Clint’s threatening arrow. Clint took a moment to register the bandage around Coulson’s head, the thin trickle of dried blood from beneath it where his ear should be.

 

“You don’t remember?” Banner asked finally.

 

“I… do,” Coulson said. He touched a hand to his bandaged ear. Clint tensed. “I was taken by Loki, Romanov too. She must have shaken it off somehow. The last thing I remember is Agent Romanov shooting me in the ear. I think she was trying to knock my comm offline. She must have stuffed me in here…somehow…” He glanced up suddenly. “Loki is intending to set up a distraction that will result in his capture.”

 

“We’ve already done that,” Stark said. He melted back into his chair. “I’ve done it twice, in fact. It’s getting old now.”

 

Coulson frowned at him a little. “He has an escape plan involving Captain America.” The way he said it sounded more like a question.

 

“Captain America is alive.” Clint lowered his bow as he spoke. “And he is currently being controlled by Loki.”

 

“By that,” Banner said, and pointed to the scepter Stark had wrapped in a shirt.

 

The four of them turned and looked at it; their stares hanging like a drum beat in the air. Coulson seemed panicked as he looked at it, Stark and Banner only tired. “As long as we don’t touch it directly,” Stark said as they stared. “I think we’ll be fine.”

 

“Very scientific of you,” Clint said. He could feel Stark’s glare boring into him, but he just collapsed in giddiness. He slipped down in the chair behind him. “Do you know where Loki plans to activate the Tesseract?”

 

“No,” Coulson said. He sat gingerly in another chair. Banner was the only one still standing, tucked into a corner wringing his hands. “Romanov might have known, but I don’t know where she’s gone. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been unconscious, or where _she_ is.”

 

“Then New York is still our safest bet. With Natasha off the radar and Fury neck deep in that invasion, the four of us will have to take out Loki.” Stark seemed drained as he spoke. Clint watched him for a moment before turning back to move the jet more quickly and more directly.

 

After a moment, he heard Banner sit as well. Quietly, gingerly, the man said what hung silently in the air.

 

“I think you mean the five of us.”


	20. Chapter 20

A secret agent, a dangerous assassin, an irradiated scientist, and a man from another universe fly to New York.

 

It sounded like the start to a joke, and Coulson clung to the dry humor of that thought as he tried to calm himself. He steepled his fingers together and ignored the splitting pain in his head as he moved to the swivel chair beside Clint and observed the two scientists bickering.

 

“Why are you suddenly so eager to unleash the Hulk?”

 

Banner winced at his words. Coulson saw him wringing his hands together. He noted the nervous tic with a spy’s precision. Banner ran a hand over his watch band and then moved to cover it. “I’m not eager. I’m never _eager_ , exactly. But if I do it on purpose at the right time I’ll have more control.”

 

“You have plenty of control _now_. You just want an excuse for when you run off at the end.” Stark wasn’t looking at any of them. His focus was on the staff, which he was poking at with a screwdriver.

 

“You’re confusing me with the other—“

 

“No way.” Stark waved a hand to dispel the notion. “You’re way more prepared than him. You’ve got a backpack full of tech tricks that makes _me_ look like I pulled my engineering experience out of a Cracker Jack box. The other guy just had a toothbrush.”

 

“The other…? Oh.” Banner laughed. “It’s not just a toothbrush, you know.”

 

“Really?” Stark finally looked up at him. “What’s it do? High powered laser? Ah, maybe it emits sound waves of any frequency? Could be useful to shake apart a tank or two.”

 

“Do you think you could get a frequency device small enough to fit in a toothbrush?”

 

“An electric one? Sure. The problem would be getting the electrolytic capacitor to deal with the stress. If it can shake apart the tank, wouldn’t it destroy the brush?”

 

“Not if you knew the resonance frequency of a tank.”

 

“They’re always like this,” Clint said pleasantly to him as Stark and Banner flowed smoothly from bickering to discussing feats of engineering. “Just ignore them.”

 

Coulson turned to look at Clint. The other man wasn’t looking at him. He didn’t really seem to be looking at anything, even though his hands were sliding over the controls with practiced ease and he was staring out the window. Coulson sat up a little straighter.

 

“Hawkeye…”

 

Clint shook his head. “Stark said in the other timeline it was me who Loki took.” Coulson snapped his mouth shut at the words. “So no biggie. It happens to the best of us.”

 

Coulson nodded slowly. “All right.” He watched Clint for another moment before turning away. “So is it true that Captain America…?”

 

Clint burst out laughing. “Okay, now I know you’re cured.” His eyes were glittering, though he still didn’t turn to look at Coulson. “Yes. He’s alive. But we may have some issues sorting him out.”

 

“Natasha just smacked me in the head. Woke up with a splitting headache.” Coulson shrugged. “That should do the trick again.”

 

“That’s if we can get at him. He’s faster and stronger than…a normal human.” Clint shrugged away.

 

Coulson had a moment to wonder what had happened while he was out before Stark suddenly shouted out, distracting him.

 

“Hello? Walking battery!” He smacked a hand across his chest.

 

“Oh, right!”

 

Coulson watched with interest as Banner produced a pair of bracers from his pack. Stark pulled his shirt off over his head and Banner leaned in to connect the bracers to the little glowing circle there.

 

“What is that?” Coulson asked.

 

“Arc reactor.” Stark said simply. He glanced up at Coulson and smiled a dazzling smile. “Glad you’re okay, Agent.”

 

Coulson nodded. He clutched his hands together. He didn’t exactly know this person, but from what he’d been able to glean from their conversations, Stark knew him. “Me, too.” He leaned back in his chair. Stark was still watching him as he let Banner fiddle with the device in his chest. After a moment, he turned away and Coulson let out a breath.

 

“Better wrap up this tea party,” Clint said as his monitor beeped. “Five minutes.”

 

Stark stilled. Banner closed his eyes for a moment before glancing up at him. His hands were still resting on Stark’s chest. They shared an unspoken moment, and Coulson had to avert his eyes. He turned to see Clint handing him a gun.

 

“You, Banner, and Stark go in first,” Clint said quietly to him. Coulson holstered the gun. “I’ll be getting to higher ground.” His face was a hard line. “I won’t be able to…”

 

Coulson stood up. He suddenly felt a rush of energy. “I’m not falling for Loki’s tricks twice,” he said simply. Clint smirked at him.

 

“I wasn’t worried about it.”

 

They suited up. The scepter was lashed to Banner’s pack. Stark fiddled with the wires in his chest before pulling his shirt back on. Banner had the bracers on, and Coulson was mentally cataloguing bullets when Clint dipped the quinjet low.

 

Clint was a very good pilot, and so it was only a few feet from the back of the jet to the roof of Stane International. Coulson jumped, landing hard, and had a few scant seconds to pull his gun on America’s greatest hero.

 

*

 

“Stane!”

 

Bruce had a brief moment to register the impending chaos. He saw the body of a woman at the side of the tower, her hair fluttering in the wind. Jane. He saw Coulson raising his gun and firing, the shot glancing off his attacker’s shoulder. Rogers. He saw Obadiah Stane raising a blue-powered gun and firing it. Tony.

 

He flicked his wrist and a shield of blue-green energy shot out of his bracers, intercepting Stane’s shot and protecting Tony. Tony wasted no time, jumping at Stane in a blur of white-hot energy.

 

Bruce watched the two bounce off each other and turned to Rogers.

 

Rogers was on Coulson, his fingers tight against the other man’s neck, his face impassive. Bruce leapt at him and his shielded fist connected with the side of Rogers’ head, sending him flying backwards. Coulson stumbled away, choking, and raised his gun to fire again.

 

“Knock him out,” Coulson said impassively, as if he were discussing the weather or stock trends.

 

Bruce blocked a blow from his right as Rogers tried to take his head off. He countered. He heard the _pop, pop_ of Coulson’s suppressing fire and tried to keep his breathing under control. Calm, cool, collected. Rogers went flying across the roof top again before jumping up. _They’re not shooting at you_.

 

“Three,” Coulson said. Bruce nodded. Coulson fired another shot and that was two. They advanced on Rogers, who was grinning at them pleasantly.

 

He struck out with his shield, but he could feel the energy waning. Rogers could absorb too much. He had a moment to consider that Loki perhaps _hadn’t_ been as badly hurt as he’d looked as he felt his bracers stutter out and heard Coulson fire his last shot.

 

Rogers was on Coulson in a second as he struggled to reload. Bruce saw the punch, heard the sickening crack, felt the green-hot fire flaring up inside him as he jumped forward, the scepter already in his hands, crashing down on Rogers’ head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually written all the chapters now. They just need cleaning and editing, so expect regular updates for the next nine days!


	21. Chapter 21

“I surrender.”

 

Tony growled. He wanted to do it. Wanted to fire. Wanted to blow Stane’s head clean off because all he could see when he looked down at him was that smirk. All he could hear was _golden goose_ and _how ironic, Tony_. He grit his teeth as his repulsors whined in protest. Stane was right there with that same, smug look on his face but _no_.

 

He reminded himself that this Stane was not the same person. But that didn’t mean he was a good guy.

 

“You’re working with Loki. Give me one reason why I should accept your surrender.”

 

Stane didn’t answer. He merely raised his now-empty hands, the gun cast aside, and looked over Tony’s shoulder at the battle still waging behind him. Gradually, gradually Tony pulled himself together. He yanked himself back into the moment far removed from gasping breaths and shattering glass and proof that Tony Stark had a heart. He came back to himself in time to hear Coulson’s cry of anguish, and turned to see Bruce driving Steve’s head to the ground with a sickening crack of the scepter.

 

“Bruce, put it down!”

 

Bruce was already raising his arms again and Tony tackled him. His boots carried him into the other man and he grappled with him for a moment, flinging his hands over Bruce’s arms and trying desperately to pull the scepter away without actually touching it. “Put it down, Bruce. Put it down.”

 

He heard Steve let out a weak gurgle. Inside, he was panicking, and he could see it reflected in Bruce’s eyes as blue and green and brown warred helplessly. Bruce snarled at him, leaning in, and Tony had a moment to consider that he was being a complete idiot before Bruce seemed to register the situation.

 

Their eyes locked, and there was clarity in Bruce’s face. He relaxed into Tony’s grip and Tony smirked at him.

 

“Easy, big guy. Just drop it.”

 

Bruce did, and the scepter clattered to the ground. Tony let out a wavering laugh and Bruce almost smiled back before his gaze shifted upward, over Tony’s shoulder and Tony registered pure panic there.

 

“Get down.” Bruce yanked him away, positioning himself between Tony and the whirring energy of Stane’s Tesseract gun. Tony stumbled and almost fell; only his boots kept him upright in time to turn and see Bruce walking forward, prepared to take on the inevitable shot.

 

 _Shick_.

 

Stane froze, his face confused. His finger loosened on the trigger of the gun. He fell to his knees, his mouth opening wetly, and then collapsed forward over the gun. Tony could see the arrow shaft in his back.

 

Tony and Bruce wavered for a moment before Bruce turned on his heel and rushed to where Jane lay at the edge of the platform. Tony stumbled forward as well and knelt beside Steve’s prone body.

 

He pushed back Steve’s hair and noted blood and quickly-healing bruises. He could see Steve’s chest rising and falling in time with his breaths and so he turned away, leaving him to Bruce. He crawled over to Coulson lying in a heap in the corner, and felt his own breath catch in his throat.

 

Coulson turned his head carefully to face him. His eyes were sparkling wet as he looked over. “Shit,” Tony said at the sight of him. “Shit, Phil.”

 

“He’s not quite what I expected,” Coulson said, his words pained.

 

Tony shuffled near him. He placed a hand on Coulson chest and could feel shifting bone and flesh. He yanked away. “He wasn’t what I had expected, either.”

 

Coulson gazed up at him, his eyes a little unfocused. Tony could see blood leaking through the bandage on his head and in one hysterical moment registered that that was the least of Phil’s worries. “Seems like a nice guy. Great right hook.”

 

“Bruce,” Tony said. He was panicking. He knew he was. “Bruce, get over here.”

 

Bruce was by his side in an instant. “Let me see,” he said curtly. He ran his hands over Coulson’s body and Coulson hissed and tried to move away. “Fractured ribs, broken right arm. Dislocated shoulder. I don’t think he has a spinal injury. He’ll be okay, but he needs a doctor.”

 

“I’ll be fine,” Coulson said as Bruce worked. “Where is the Tesseract?”

 

Tony pulled his eyes away from the scene, feeling sick. He surveyed the roof for a moment, noting with abject horror the bodies strewn around. “I don’t see it.” He gulped. “Goddammit, I don’t see it. Where is it?”

 

“Try to wake Steve. He may know.”

 

Tony took a deep breath and pulled himself to his feet. “Jane?” he asked blankly.

 

“Unconscious. We’ll have to wait until she awakes to see what the oxygen deprivation has done to her.”

 

He grasped Steve’s shoulder and shook it. Steve was limp in his hands as he shook, and shook, and at some point he realized that he was just _shaking_. Tony’s whole body was a shiver as he tried to rouse Steve and he was angry, so angry. He tried to stomp it down for Bruce’s sake but he couldn’t, so he let it out in a loud growl. He drew back his hand and slapped Steve across the face.

 

Steve startled awake, his eyes flashing innocence that made Tony’s blood boil. He reared back again but Steve rolled out from under him to his hands and knees and threw up.

 

Tony was dazed as Bruce touched his shoulder, pressed something into his hand. “Here,” Bruce said. “Clint needs to talk to you.” He walked away to examine Jane again.

 

He looked down at the communicator clutched in his hand. It looked bloody and dinged. Like it had been shot, he realized, because this was Coulson’s communicator. He shoved it into his ear.

 

“We’ve got a problem.”

 

Tony surveyed Captain America losing his lunch, Jane and Coulson being tended to by a calm and impassive Bruce, and he nodded. “I’d say that’s the understatement of the fucking year.”

 

“You don’t know where the Tesseract is,” Clint said over the comm.

 

“ _No_ I don’t know where it is.” He wanted to throw the communicator away and gather everyone in his arms. He just wanted to leave and take his friends with him. “It was supposed to be here.”

 

“What about your tracking algorithm?”

 

“Only set to go off when the Tessearct is activated. Loki has hidden it for every other case.”

 

He heard Clint sigh. “Is he…?”

 

Tony glanced to where Coulson still lay struggling for breath against painful broken ribs. “He’s alive.”

 

“I can’t contact Fury.”

 

Tony closed his eyes. He knew what that meant. The helicarrier had fallen to Loki. He took a deep, steadying breath. “All right,” he said. He repeated it. “All right. We need to find the Tesseract.”

 

“I know where it is,” Steve said weakly from the ground. He turned to look at Tony. His skin was sallow and Tony watched as Steve gripped weakly at the ground as if to center himself. “But we’ll need a plane.”

 

“That’s fine,” Clint said over the comm, and Tony echoed it.

 

Steve slowly stood. Tony could see his external wounds had mostly healed. He wondered what Loki had made him do before they could arrive. “It’s on the helicarrier.”

 

“What.” Tony blinked. He heard Clint swearing through the comm.

 

“The helicarrier,” Steve said again. “And he _is_ coming here.” He looked so earnest that Tony almost wanted to lash out again. “To the city. We need to intercept him. We can’t let him get near all these people.”

 

“I’m on my way,” Clint said, even as Bruce glanced up.

 

“She’s waking up.”

 

They went to Jane. She stirred in Bruce’s arms. Tony could see dark purple bruises on her neck in the perfect shape of Captain America’s broad hands. Steve was looking sick again. Her head lolled to the side and her eyes widened at the sight of Steve. She jerked away and Steve did as well.

 

“It’s all right,” Bruce said soothingly. “We’ve fixed him.”

 

She nodded mutely and Bruce began to help her get her feet under her. Tony turned away again with Steve.

 

“I hope you’ve got a plan,” he said. “I’m running on empty.”

 

Steve glanced over at him. He was smiling slightly, and Tony wondered how anyone could be so ridiculously confident all the time. “I do.”

 

Tony nodded. “All right. Call it, Cap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Obie thought he was the main villain. :(


	22. Chapter 22

Stark seemed lost. He stood off to one side, arms crossed over his chest, as the rest of the team scrambled around him.

 

Steve could see him looking at Obadiah Stane’s still form. He could feel himself stiffen and clench, almost reaching out to comfort the other man. Their conversation on the helicarrier flashed through his head—Stark hitting him, crates labelled _Stane International_ in neat, blocky letters. Steve had to take a calming breath to avoid retching at the thought, at what he had done.

 

He centered himself and tried to focus on the here-and-now. He had explained the plan, now they just had to execute it as quickly as possible.

 

His legs carried him numbly to Agent Coulson. Steve thought then, as he bent to lift the man and tried to block his wet complaints, that the worst part was that he had betrayed him.

 

No, no, not betrayed Coulson. That was not the first thought that flitted through his mind. Nor was it sorrow for Ms. Foster’s neck, and the neat imprints of his fingers upon her. It was not even the crushing despair he knew he should feel for Stark’s cold, dead look. He should have felt angry at himself for not being a Captain, a solider, a leader enough to comfort the other man, and instead it was left to the quiet Dr. Banner who placed a hand on Stark’s shoulder and held him fast to reality.

 

No. His first thought in the midst of this was that he had betrayed _Loki_.

 

It was dull. Like the edge of a stone it bore at his chest, threatening to drive him to the ground with its force. Only Coulson’s form, clutched in his hands, kept him standing, and moving, and allowed him to walk briskly to the hovering quinjet.

 

Coulson pressed a hand to his chest, directly where the pain of that imagined-stone lay heaviest. Steve adjusted him softly, trying to carry him so that his wounds were not aggravated. “Sorry I couldn’t be there.”

 

Steve did not look down. “What do you mean, Agent?”

 

“When you woke up. Sorry I couldn’t be there.” He laughed, and it was thick and hot and Steve could hear the smack of blood against his lips. “You know, I have almost all of your trading cards.”

 

Steve almost dropped him. His almost set him on the ground and turned on his heel and stepped off the roof of the building into cool, clean air, but he was stronger. He needed to be a pillar of strength in this war. So instead, he said only, “Those must be hard to come by.”

 

“In this day and age? Definitely.”

 

He carried him up the gangplank and into the plane. The archer Clint had already set up a cot, and Steve carefully lay the man down. He heard Coulson shudder as he did so, his breath pained and labored. “We need to get you to a medic,” he said as he fastened Coulson to the cot. Straps around his legs and chest, his arms kept free, a gun nestled at his side just in case.

 

“Sure, but there’s no time for that.” Coulson stared up at him with bright, clean eyes. “You said we had about fifteen minutes, and that was six minutes ago.”

 

Steve nodded. “Just try and rest.” He reached down inside himself, deep, to call upon the strength to lay his Captain’s smile on Coulson. It was the same smile he had given to Stark what seemed like a lifetime ago. One that said everything would be okay because _Captain America_ was here.

 

He started to turn away, but Coulson’s arm shot out and wrapped around his wrist. He stilled. He could pull away. He could have pulled away even if Coulson had been at full strength. But he didn’t.

 

“I know how you feel,” Coulson said conversationally. He could have been talking about troop deployments or ration shortages. “And it’s all right.”

 

Steve didn’t look at him, didn’t say anything. If he did he might admit that when he closed his eyes he saw his own hands at Foster’s throat, his shield driving into Clint, and his fist connecting with Coulson. Worst of all, Loki’s disapproving grimace.

 

“Everything felt very clear, didn’t it?” Coulson asked. Steve didn’t move. “To me it seemed like I finally had a place in the world. I finally had my own agency.” He laughed weakly. “How ironic is that? But, the worst part was when I awoke here.” He gestured weakly with one arm. “My ear was shot off, I didn’t know where I was, the last thing I remember is Agent Romanov attacking me, and my first thought? ‘Boy, Loki’s going to be _pissed_.’”

 

“I still wasn’t convinced that anything I’d been told was really true until…” Steve clenched his fists. He wished he could look down and see cold, calming leather, but he saw only skin. He unclenched them. “You’re a soldier,” he said, and he didn’t know who he was talking to. “You’ll be just fine.” He cast that grin over his shoulder again and Coulson visibly relaxed.

 

“Everyone got their shit together?” Clint said over the comm. “I’m about to take this bird up.

 

Steve glanced around the plane. He hadn’t even noticed the rest arrive. Stark and Banner stood in one corner, covering Stane’s body with a blanket. He could hear them muttering things like _unlimited clean energy_ and _when we get back_. Ms. Foster stood near the door to the cockpit, her arms crossed over herself as she tried to lean as far away from Steve as possible.

 

“Ms. Foster,” he said. She jumped at his words and he stood very still so as not to startle her. “Perhaps you should sit up front so Agent Barton can go over the controls with you.”

 

She nodded once, stiffly, and disappeared through the door.

 

Steve managed to sit down and rushed a hand through his hair. A few strands came loose, clutching at his sweaty fingers, and he stared at the way they glistened and reflected under the artificial light. Carefully, he picked those hairs off and let them fall to the floor.

 

“You’re certain Agent Romanov will be there?”

 

He glanced up at where Dr. Banner stood near him, nervously clutching and unclutching his hands. “I sure hope so, Doctor,” he said. He offered the man a wan smile and Banner sat beside him on the bench. “She must have been there at some point to deposit Agent Coulson. Coulson says she’s no longer compromised—maybe she never was. But she could fool Loki, and seems smart enough to have figured out his plan.” Beneath them, the plane shuddered upwards and they rocketed away.

 

Banner nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing.

 

Stark flopped down and threw an arm over Banner’s shoulder. “Need a recharge, Doc?”

 

Banner laughed and nodded demurely. Steve frowned a little to himself at the thought. He generally didn’t think of men as _demure_ , but somehow Banner managed it. He watched Banner take off his shield-generating bracers and begin to pull out wires as Stark raised his shirt and exposed metal and skin.

 

Steve glanced up. He caught Stark’s eye and had to look away at the strange defiance he saw there. He couldn’t quite imagine how Howard had spawned such a person. But then, he supposed, that his Howard _hadn’t_. This Tony Stark was different, disconnected from their reality.

 

As soon as the bracers were connected to his chest, Stark began to talk. Steve realized, dimly, that some of those words were English and some of them were about enhancements and upgrades and greater power for Banner’s bracers. Banner was the only one really listening.

 

Stark only seemed to function correctly when Banner was around. It wasn’t uncommon; Steve had seen it in battle often enough. It was like Banner was the only part of his life that fit properly, smoothed out rough edges. For a long time Bucky had been like that for Steve, until he became all smooth edges through the power of modern science. He had to close his eyes at the thought, the old pain like a salve when compared to all the new damage. Steve thought that, perhaps, for Stark it was more pronounced. He’d been plucked from another world, deposited into this one, and only Banner seemed to understand him fully.

 

It was just something for him to keep in mind when he gave commands in the field.

 

The rest of their short flight was calm; the only noise was the excited murmur of the two scientists and the harsh breathing of Coulson. Steve tried to ground himself in the flex of his fingers against his shield, in the strangely temperature-controlled feel of the plane.

 

His thoughts scattered as Clint’s voice rang through the tiny room. “We’ve got a problem.” Steve glanced towards the door.

 

“The helicarrier isn’t here.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's not just a toothbrush, you know."

“The helicarrier isn’t here.”

 

Clint yanked the quinjet around and pointed them back towards the city. He could feel Foster’s eyes on him, watching his movements and learning how to fly the jet.

 

Over the speaker, Stark spoke. “How could they get past us? Are they cloaked?”

 

“They can cloak to our radar, but we should still be able to get a visual on them.” Clint pushed the engines as far as they could go, and further. They were already maxing out, rows of red on the panel in front of him, but he didn’t care. This couldn’t wait.

 

The door swished open behind him and Stark stuck his head into the cockpit. “What about the retro-reflection panels?”

 

“The what? Stark, I don’t have time for this. They’re gone. We need to _find_ them.”

 

Stark frowned. He glanced between Foster and Clint for a moment. “We should have just stayed at Sta—at the tower. We knew they would go back there.”

 

A broad hand came to rest on Stark’s shoulder. Stark yanked away from Rogers’ grip, but Rogers didn’t seem too concerned. “Mr. Stark, can you get us some communication devices? We’re going to need them.”

 

“Fine.”

 

He disappeared into the back of the ship, and Clint heard the sounds of ripping panels. “You don’t have to build them from scratch. We might have some extra communicators in the cargo hold,” Clint called over his shoulder, and received only a grumble in response.

 

Rogers hovered in the door for a moment, casting his gaze awkwardly over Foster. Clint still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure what had happened, but he knew it had to be bad. Foster was tense beside him, and it made his skin itch. He wanted to hold his bow, but he was busy flying the jet.

 

“Here,” he said suddenly, surprising himself. He twisted Foster’s chair around so she was in front of the command console, then he stood. “You take control. Bring us in low.”

 

“It’s unlikely we’ll be able to get close to the helicarrier. They’ll see us coming a mile away,” Rogers said.

 

Clint took out his bow and gave it a quick once-over, already feeling better as he held it in his hands. “We don’t need to. Get me to a high point and I’ll cover you.”

 

“I have this,” Banner broke suddenly into their conversation, holding… a toothbrush?

 

Clint and Rogers both stared at him for a moment. Some of the confusion must have shown on their faces, because he smiled wickedly. “It’s an EMP. Drop me over the helicarrier. I can survive the fall easy, and detonate it.”

 

“The Hulk is smart enough to detonate an EMP?” Clint asked, since Rogers still looked as confused as ever.

 

“He’s a tool-using animal. Surely you’ve seen the footage?” When Clint shook his head, Banner continued. “He actually seems to prefer tools. He will often use cars and metal as a sort of boxing-glove analogue. He’s been known to use rope, doors, anything, really. He’s not completely mindless. So, yes, he will know how to activate the EMP. Especially since I designed it with him in mind.”

 

“Sorry, what’s an EMP?” Rogers held up a hand, stalling their conversation.

 

“Electromagnetic Pulse,” Banner supplied. “It will knock out the tech in the helicarrier. They likely have some shielding to it, but if we get it close enough to where their central computers are stored, the best shielding in the world won’t stop it.” He leaned in suddenly and dropped his voice low. “You just need to make sure to get Tony as far away as possible. The EMP will also knock out the arc reactor in his chest.”

 

Clint realized he could still hear Stark muttering to himself, or rather, talking to Coulson who was likely trying to ignore him. “You want to go in with no backup?”

 

“That’s not a good idea.” Rogers reached out a hand and placed it reassuringly on Banner’s shoulder. “You and Stark,” he pitched his voice low as well, and Clint felt suddenly like a gossip. “You work better together. I haven’t seen this ‘Hulk’ but I think _you_ are worth more to us. Your technology is pretty swell.”

 

Banner frowned. “I… don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before.”

 

“I can tell that’s how Mr. Stark feels.”

 

“Clint…” Foster said. Clint snapped back to attention, pulling away from the feel-good session and turning to her. Her voice was rough with misuse, but still clear and stable. “There’s something there.”

 

Clint leaned over the panel and gazed out the window. The console didn’t register it yet, but he had the best eyes in the world. It was probably just a shadow in the fog over Manhattan to Foster and the rest, but to him it was unmistakable. The helicarrier, floating darkly over the city, and if he squinted he could see… yes. A tiny blue speck, held aloft in a metal contraption on the surface of the ship, surrounded by black-clothed agents.

 

The Tesseract.

 

“Visual confirmation on the helicarrier.”

 

There was a sudden flurry of activity. He quickly gave Foster the last rundown on the quinjet’s systems. Stark appeared and handed out communication devices to anyone who didn’t have one. Some were awkwardly shaped, and had to be taped to ears, but they worked. Clint could hear noise through them already. Banner went into the back at the call of Coulson and began to wrap his ribs so that he could sit up more easily.

 

“We’re going to fly low over that building,” Rogers pointed out one of the tallest skyscrapers near the helicarrier. “Clint, you’re there. We need you up high.” Clint nodded and began to gather his things. “Banner and Stark, you’re on the ground. Get the people mobilized away from the city.”

 

“Why would they listen to us?” Stark asked. He seemed genuinely curious.

 

“You’re going to have to make them listen. Do some…” he waggled his fingers. “Hack? Hacking? What’s the word? Go into their technology. Ms. Foster, Agent Coulson, you’ll be on the other side of the helicarrier in the jet. Do not engage. You’re my extraction plan.”

 

“Extraction plan?” Banner glanced up from where he was wrapping bandages around the wincing Coulson. Clint winced as well, feeling the phantom pain.

 

“Yep.” Rogers smiled. It was a brilliant, sunny smile and Clint instantly knew it came from years of practice and that at least ninety-eight percent of it was fake, but it still made him feel a bit better. “Can you show me how to use that EMP?”

 

He nodded and they bowed their heads together to go over the tiny device housed in the toothbrush. Stark hovered nearby, a bundle of nervous energy. Clint took a step towards the back of the plane to get into position, but Foster’s hand on his arm stopped him.

 

“Wait,” she said. Her face was a tense line. “Hawkeye, wait. What is—do you see that?”

 

He turned and looked, focusing his eyes on that distant blue point. He could see a single body approach the device housing the Tesseract. The person held up a hand and the blue glow began to spread. Clint pursed his lips as a sudden shockwave danced over the surface of the helicarrier.

 

Beside him, Foster gasped as a blue beam shot straight up into the sky. It was huge, and bright, and a blind man could have seen the way it tore into the sky and left a rift where clouds and blue should be.

 

A ship came through the tear in the sky. Then another. Then more. Pouring through onto the city on glowing metal bikes, dozens, then hundreds of alien beings.

 

Clint placed a hand over Foster’s shoulder. He knew he should comfort her; he knew that was more Rogers’ purview. He yanked his hand away. “Get me to that building,” he said.

 

He walked to the back of the jet without looking back. He ignored Coulson’s pleading gaze. He smacked open the door and felt cool wind on his face, and when the jet got low enough, he jumped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to say, but all of the BannerTech in this fic is based on real tech from the comics. Banner's a genius.


	24. Chapter 24

“There, that street is wide enough. Take us down.” Rogers tapped the glass, pointing.

 

Jane had never wanted to throw up so much in her life, and she’d experienced the morning after a physics conference that had gotten her drunk enough to dance un-ironically to _Teenage Dream_. She had to hold back bile as she tipped the jet down, feeling it shudder under her in-expert touch, to swoop over lines of cars and running people.

 

She heard the door open and close as Tony and Bruce jumped out, and then she was alone with Rogers and Coulson.

 

She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. She had to focus on remembering what Clint had taught her and slowly raised the nose of the plane and pointing it at the looming presence of the helicarrier. Her fingers stumbled over the keys, but the jet responded and she avoided a building.

 

Jane took a deep breath, and reminded herself that Rogers and Coulson were no longer the enemy.

 

But she’d _seen_ them get taken. She’d seen the flash of blue in Coulson’s eyes as he worked side by side with Loki. She’d felt Rogers’ hand against her neck as he tried to _kill her_. They were supposedly cured, but she couldn’t stop the abject panic she felt just being near them, trapped as they were in the tiny jet.

 

“Get me as low as you can, Ms. Foster.”

 

Jane hitched in another breath and managed to nod. She couldn’t quite talk to Rogers yet, but she could still follow his orders.

 

Three planes, human-made ones, rose from the surface of the helicarrier and headed towards them. She had to skim right to avoid the bullets from the first, and ran smack into one of the alien bikes. The jet shuddered beneath her as the bike splatted across the bow like a bug.

 

She took a deep breath. Then another.

 

“Captain, could you give me a hand?” Coulson asked. Rogers gave a curt nod and went to the back of the plane, gathering up Coulson and depositing him in a chair beside Jane. She tried not to look at him, suddenly feeling more boxed in as she weaved in and out of hostile forces. Coulson managed to lift one hand weakly to the console and assist her, and it was a bit easier then, but they were still being driven away from the helicarrier.

 

She realized she’d been staring at the console, numbers and indicators swimming before her eyes, and she glanced up. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t.

 

An alien ship, bigger than the rest, slowly flowed out of the wormhole like a flower spreading its petals to the sun. Some abstract part of her was fascinated by being this close to an actual portal to another area of the galaxy, but most of her was screaming as she saw the two men riding the beast-machine.

 

Loki, tall and proud in glittering green-and-gold armor, his cape billowing in the wind. Beside him, on his knees and bowed to the ground, was Thor.

 

She lurched to the floor and retched for a moment. She felt strong hands on her arms and yanked away from Rogers’ attempts to sit her upright.

 

“I’m fine,” she spat. Jane crawled back into the pilot’s chair herself and aimed for the helicarrier. Coulson gave her a concerned look.

 

“The plan doesn’t change,” Rogers commanded. “You do not engage any hostiles. Got that?”

 

She didn’t acknowledge him. “Get ready to jump. Fifteen seconds.”

 

Rogers drew himself up tall, intimidating, and it only made her more furious. “You do not engage. Do you understand, Ms. Foster?”

 

“Get to the back of the plane!”

 

Rogers took a step back, then another. He spun on his heel and grabbed up his shield. Jane pointed the nose of the jet down, beneath the belly of that alien ship, and scrapped against the surface of the helicarrier. The jet rocked and pitched as she did so, and she could barely hear the door open and Rogers step out over the sound of metal on metal.

 

She yanked the jet into a tight turn, glancing out the window to see Rogers doing a roll and bringing up his shield to bounce back bullets. Coulson flipped one of the jet’s guns around and fired at a passing enemy.

 

“We need to get to a safe distance,” he said.

 

“We need to get to Thor. Can you fly the jet by yourself?”

 

Coulson stared over at her weakly. She could see the way he struggled to sit upright, could smell the acrid stench of blood on his body. But he nodded. “Yes.”

 

“Then get me there.”

 

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting as she pulled herself out of the chair and stumbled to the back of the plane. She put on a parachute and dropped a hand to the taser she still carried, like a memory.

 

“Loki was afraid of you talking to Thor,” Coulson said as she ran her hand over the taser. She looked over at him, but he was facing away, intent in dodging as many of the ships as he could.

 

“Good,” she said to the back of his head. “He should be.”

 

“Get ready.”

 

She gripped one hand on the cord of her parachute, and felt quite inexplicably empty. Everything seemed to slow down. She could hear the beating of blood in her ears, the hum and whir of the jet’s engines. Loki’s voice broke through her adrenaline like a knife.

 

“People of Earth.” His voice was all around, all-encompassing. She knew it was reaching every ear in the city. “ _Bow_.”

 

She ripped open the door of the jet, took one, two, three steps off, and pulled the cord of her parachute.

 

*

 

Thor leaned in to the hand petting his head, humming slightly to himself as his Brother laughed.

 

He always liked when his Brother smiled. It was much better than the fear and confusion that had so clouded his features on Asgard. Thor had once hoped that Midgard could be a safe-haven for his Brother, and now it seemed it would come to pass.

 

“People of Earth,” Loki said, his voice soft and lyrical. “Bow.”

 

Thor had to laugh a little. Loki had always had a flare for the dramatic. Some small part of himself wondered if he shouldn’t worry about it, but the hand on the back of his head kept him grounded. He had nothing to worry about when it came to his Brother. Loki was by his side, and it was good.

 

“We have a visitor, dear brother,” Loki whispered in his ear, silky-smooth. “Do you wish to see her?”

 

“Would it please you, Brother?”

 

Loki pulled back and gazed down at him. Thor didn’t even try to read the thoughts on Loki’s face. He knew that Loki was happy. How could they not be happy when they were side-by-side?

 

“It might,” Loki said. He turned Thor’s head to look at the sky.

 

There was a shape, plummeting from some Midgardian bird-plane. A human woman, he realized absently, held aloft by strings and cloth. A stray gust of wind caught her, and Thor knew that she would be pulled far afield of their aircraft. But Loki twisted his wrist, played with the wind, suggested it direct her differently, and she landed hard against the surface of their vessel.

 

Thor watched her flail to release the ropes and cloth as it threatened to pull her off of the ship. Loki laughed above him, and Thor smiled as well. He liked when his brother was happy.

 

“Loki,” she said angrily, and that made Thor frown. She drew a small weapon and pointed it at the two of them. “You let him go.”

 

Loki turned his head for him. He was always so helpful. Loki looked down at him, slightly concerned. “Do you with to go, dearest Thor?”

 

“No, Brother.”

 

Loki smiled at that, and Thor smiled back. “You see, Lady Jane, Thor now resides by my side.” Thor felt the hand in his hair tighten, then relax. “As he always shall.”

 

The woman wavered. Her eyes fell from Loki to Thor, and Thor wondered where he had seen her before. She seemed so familiar, but it was like the fog that befell the city. Unclear, impassible. “Thor,” she said carefully. How did she know his name? Oh, but Loki had just said it. “Look down. Do you see Mjolnir by your side?”

 

Thor glanced down to his knee. He could still feel Loki holding him, grounding him, as he blinked at Mjolnir. She was resting a few inches away from him, not quite touching him, and his fingers ached to pick her up and feel her comforting presence. But why did he need that? Loki comforted him well enough.

 

“Pick up Mjolnir, Thor,” the woman said. She sounded desperate. Thor thought that perhaps Loki could help her. “Pick up your hammer.”

 

Thor considered it for a moment. Loki’s hand on the back of his head flexed, and he could feel fingers digging into his skull like a pleasant massage. He leaned back into the caress and sighed. “I do not need to.”

 

The woman stilled, a quiet vibration of nervous energy. “You don’t… Loki, what have you _done_?” She took a step forward. Something in Thor’s clouded mind registered that she was very close. He saw her raise the weapon higher, felt Loki take a step back but not break contact.

 

As her finger depressed the trigger, Thor felt rage overtake him.

 

It was sudden, fulfilling, and he tore himself away from Loki in order to defend him. He attacked the woman that would _dare_ to threaten his brother. Wires sprouted from the weapon she held and latched onto his Brother’s chest, and he shouted in anguish as Loki lolled back and stumbled. He barely registered his own fist coming out and connecting with the woman, driving her tumbling away down the back of the beast they rode.

 

The beast. Loki. _Jane_.

 

It all came rushing back as Jane fell away in a tangle of limbs, damaged by Thor’s own great strength. Before he had even rounded out his swing, Loki’s spell lifted from his mind and Thor saw. Thor _realized_.

 

“Oh, Odin.”

 

He whirled around and saw the destruction that rained upon the city. He saw Loki stumbling to his feet, yanking wires from his chest. He saw the broken form of Jane lying prone upon the beast. An inhuman roar escaped from Thor’s chest, bubbling up and over.

 

He reached out a hand. Mjolnir flew to him. “Loki.”

 

Loki threw up his hands. “Now, brother, I’m sure we can—”

 

Thor smashed Mjolnir into Loki’s head, and his anger was so unchecked that Loki flew under the brunt of his blow, off into the distance, and smacked into a building that seemed miles away.

 

The Thunderer wanted to follow, wanted to lay waste to his trickster brother, but Jane’s wet cough roused him from his fury.

 

“Thor,” she said. He turned and saw her struggling to rise. He went to her side and lifted her. “Get me to Coulson, okay?” She pointed a weak hand to where a jet was fighting defensively against the alien threat.

 

“Lady Jane,” he started. She shushed him.

 

“I’ve been through a lot today, Thor,” she said with a slight, pained laugh. “Get me there, and then go to the helicarrier. That’s where you’re needed right now.”

 

There was a selfish part of Thor that wanted to say that he was needed right here, with Jane in his arms. But Thor would always answer to a call for defense, and so he nodded. Mjolnir was heavier than normal in his grasp as he spun her around and threw her into the air.

 

He flew towards the jet with Jane in his arms, holding her, and tried to block out the lying whispers that still threatened to cloud his mind.


	25. Chapter 25

Natasha was a very good agent, and so she didn’t act surprised when Captain America jumped from a quinjet flown by Agent Coulson and Dr. Foster onto the helicarrier, which was currently being overrun by aliens.

 

Instead, she jumped into the fray from her hiding spot and stood back-to-back with him, firing at anything he couldn’t hit with his shield. There was a voice, strange and silky in the back of her mind, which told her she should kill him. That made her determination to help him all the more powerful.

 

“Romanov?” he managed to shout as he bounced his shield off an alien’s head before catching it.

 

“Yes,” she answered as she did a backflip, followed by a spinning kick into one of the human insurgents.

 

And that was enough of an introduction.

 

He jerked out his shield and she took a running jump, kicking off of it and letting him throw her into the air. She twisted and spun, raining bullets down on the aliens below, before landing with one leg outstretched to trip the insurgent nearest her. She spun around, kicking, as Rogers ducked and rolled and came up beside her.

 

He kicked in the nearest door, blasting it right off its hinges, and the two of them disappeared into the ship. She laid down suppressing fire as Rogers lead the way.

 

“We need to get to where the main computers are stored,” he said. “Is there such a place? I have an EMP.” He frowned.

 

She nodded curtly. “This way.”

 

She turned on her heel and dashed down the hall, Rogers falling easily into step behind her. She could hear shouting up ahead, and hardly had to pause to knock out an insurgent, freeing the SHIELD agent he had been accosting. It was a junior agent, Natasha noted, and the woman quaked a bit at the sight of the Black Widow and Captain America.

 

“Doing well, soldier,” Rogers said, clapping her on the shoulder. “You’re with us.”

 

She nodded, and then their group was three.

 

They seemed to accumulate more and more agents as they moved through the ship. Every corner Natasha turned had another SHIELD agent staring down the barrel of a gun, or the stick of an energy weapon. Rogers never even thought of passing them up, and by the time they made it to the main computer room, some ten minutes later, they had over three dozen agents following them.

 

“Alpha group,” Rogers made a motion with his hand, sweeping across half of the agents. “Move through the next floor. Keep going until all decks are secure. Bravo, we need you on the bridge. Rest of you, guard the door. Romanov, with me.”

 

Natasha nodded and pursed her lips. She wanted to say something like _I work alone_ or _send me elsewhere_ , but instead she follow Rogers into the computer room.

 

Banks and banks of computers stood inside the expansive room. Natasha had only been in here once, on her mandatory tour of the helicarrier, but she still had the layout memorized. On her last visit the room had been bustling with interns typing lines of code and keeping SHIELD systems at peak efficiency. Now, it was devoid of life.

 

“Does it matter where I set it off?” Rogers asked before pulling out… a toothbrush?

 

She glanced at the brush, then back at his face. She still had her gun drawn. The whisper at the back of her mind told her to fire it, to kill Rogers. She lowered the gun. “What’s the range?”

 

“A lot. A few hundred yards.”

 

“Then no. Just set it off.”

 

Natasha watched as Rogers fumbled with the toothbrush. A small section on the bottom popped off in his hands, exposing a tiny metal wire. He unspooled to reveal a small, flat disk at the end. He glanced up at her.

 

“I don’t know what this will do.” He pinched the disk in between his fingers.

 

She arched an eyebrow at him. “It may do nothing. SHIELD has a lot of defenses against EMPs.”

 

He nodded, once, and crushed the disk.

 

Tiny sparks danced from the disk, and for a moment Natasha thought it hadn’t worked. Then the room seemed to suck into itself, like a vacuum, before bursting out again. Natasha went flying, landing heavily against the far wall. She could hear the sounds of exploding electronics all around her and she grimaced, covering her face with her arm as sparks flew and smoke bellowed all around her.

 

The helicarrier tipped beneath her, and she felt her stomach drop out as they fell.

 

She had a moment to wonder who the _hell_ had invented an EMP that tiny and powerful, but then her senses kicked back in. She leapt to her feet and went to Rogers, who was coughing in a corner, clutching his hand to his head. He yanked a piece of smoldering plastic and metal from his ear—a communicator, destroyed and useless now.

 

“Wow,” he said, turning the communicator over. She could see pink-red burn marks on his hands. “That packs a punch.”

 

“We need to evacuate.” The ship was sinking fast. “There’s no way of knowing where we’ll land.”

 

Rogers looked somber at the thought.

 

They stumbled from the room and gathered up the agents waiting there. They managed to get about a dozen yards before the ship started shaking, six more before the horrible sound of rushing air took over, and only one more step before they were thrown off their feet and the helicarrier crashed into the ground.

 

Everywhere bodies and limbs flew. Natasha rolled into a ball as the ship crashed. She could feel it jerk to the side, and suspected they were glancing off buildings. She grimaced as they landed and had to hold there a minute, almost as if she suspected more.

 

She got to her feet and surveyed the damage.

 

The lights were off, save for the red emergency lights on the floor. Rogers was already up, helping the groaning agents to rise. He gave her a meaningful look.

 

“We need every agent who can stand out on the streets. This threat isn’t over.”

 

Something inside her shored up at his commands. His words made it easier to ignore the whisper in her mind. She nodded and reached out to help more agents stumble to their feet. She was all quick, brusque movements until everyone was standing again and they moved to rush through the ruined ship, searching for an exit.

 

“How did you know I wasn’t compromised?” she asked Rogers as they ran, the sea of agents trailing behind them.

 

He looked determined. “Because I was.”

 

She nodded a little at that. She placed a hand over her heart where Loki had touched her with the scepter. It was like he was right behind her, whispering in her ear to kill Rogers. “I can still hear him,” she said. Rogers glanced over at her. Their feet pounded on the gangplank. “I may actually be compromised.”

 

“All right.” They reached the end of the hall. Rogers drew his shield and slammed it down on the door handle. It sheared off. “We’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

 

He kicked down the door, and they spilled out into the streets.


	26. Chapter 26

“Nice, Times Square.”

 

Bruce thought that maybe he should feel a little awkward, wrapped around Tony while the other man flew them away from the quinjet, but he didn’t. He just held on for dear life, ignoring the camera phone flashes as they rocketed by to land near one of the large television monitors.

 

He climbed off of Tony and surveyed the scene below them. There were people everywhere, most of them with cameras turned towards the hovering helicarrier and its sea of approaching aliens some blocks away. A few were pointing up at Tony and him in confusion. They weren’t afraid yet, though, which they should be.

 

“We need to get these people out of here.”

 

“Done,” Tony said. Bruce turned in surprise. Tony had gained access to one of the computers sending information to the screens. It was just a keyboard, tucked away out of sight behind a panel, but Tony’s fingers flew across it. All around them, the screens began lighting with emergency messages. Tony muttered to himself and clicked a few more buttons. “And, everyone just got a nice ‘get the fuck away’ text message. Contacting police and fire now.”

 

“Oh.” Bruce rubbed his hands together for a moment. Below them, the crowd began to swell as the danger became clear. Bruce opened his mouth to say something else, something like _why am I here, then?_ but a booming voice cut him off.

 

“People of Earth.” It was Loki’s voice, huge and dangerous and like he was standing right beside Bruce. “ _Bow_.”

 

Beneath them, people began running.

 

Bruce hitched in a breath at the terrifying sight. He could see more aliens slipping from the tear in space above the helicarrier. It made him physically ill to look at.

 

“We need to get over there,” Tony said, rising and casting the keyboard aside.

 

Bruce shot out a hand to still him. “You need to stay here until Rogers sets off the EMP. I’ll go.”

 

Tony _pouted_ at him, which made Bruce laugh a bit feverishly. “Like hell you’re going alone.” His own hand reached up to wrap around Bruce’s arm, and they stood for a moment like mirrors to each other. “I’ll go with you. I’ll fly you.”

 

“ _Hey, Lifetime Movies,”_ Clint’s voice crackled over the comm. “ _Hostile aliens coming up Broadway._ _Get ready._ ”

 

“And I haven’t even prepped the fondue.” Tony smirked at him and dropped his arm. “Normally I would ask Jarvis to do it, but…”

 

“I would be happy to oblige, sir.”

 

They both stilled for a moment. Slowly, Bruce turned his head to look at the scepter he had lashed to his pack. The light was dim, but the voice had definitely come from it. He could feel Tony’s nervous gaze as well.

 

“Jarvis?” Tony asked hesitatingly.

 

“Yes, sir?”

 

“Are you still—” Tony made a _coo-coo for cocoa puffs_ motion with his hand. “With Loki?”

 

“I believe Mr. Odinson has just rendered Mr. Laufeyson unconscious,” the AI responded. “It appears that he can only concentrate on so many things at once, and the scepter is not high on his list.”

 

“We need to get you into the city’s systems,” Tony said suddenly. He began tapping his hand against his hip. “Have you direct the retreat. Maybe you can even get to SHIELD, and we won’t have to—”

 

There was a great, piercing whine and Bruce barely had time to throw himself over Tony and raise one arm to shield them. An alien fired an energy stick at them as Bruce sprawled them down against the ground. His breath quickened at the sound of Tony’s pained shout as they landed. He held still, counting his heart beats, as Tony raised his hand and shot the alien right out of the sky.

 

Then they were both on their feet, trading blows with the aliens.

 

“How much energy do you have?” Tony shouted as he blew a hole through one alien’s ship, sending it careening into another.

 

“Three minutes of continuous use.” Bruce threw one of his energy disks and reminded himself to be _calm, cool, collected_. He ripped his pack off and tossed it to the ground. “Do what you need with Jarvis, I’ll hold them off.”

 

An arrow knocked into one alien, giving Bruce time to jump on its back and commandeer its bike. He felt a bit like an action-hero, then, as the heady rush of battle overcame him. The other guy was a distraction—a hot fire that he concentrated on along with the smooth tense of his muscles, the feel of his bracers against his wrists, the solid _woof_ of air as he blocked energy blasts.

 

Clint had his back from his perch, muttering in his ear. He could hear Tony as well, shouting something like _down in a second, dear_ as he turned one energy stick against its wielder.

 

“ _On your six,”_ Clint said over the comm.

 

Bruce looked up. He took in a deep, calming breath at the sight of an alien ship—as big as a fabled Kraken, undulating with metal and energy, as it turned the corner at the end of the street. It was larger than the skyscraper it brushed against, and its maw opened to reveal _death_ and _danger_. It pulsed towards them, and Bruce reached down, deep inside himself, to fan the flames that rested there.

 

Then he went careening as the bike beneath him just _shattered_ and a high-pitched wail reverberated across Times Square.

 

He fell to the ground, clutching at his head to block the sound emanating from all around them. He had a brief, terrifying thought that this was the creature’s attack, but then the beast shattered _too_.

 

It seemed to fly apart at the seams, the sound sending ripples over its metal body. Momentum carried the pieces of it forward as it exploded outward in a horrific, matching scream. Television monitors shattered in showers of sparks. Bruce could feel the Hulk desperately trying to push out and assess the situation with fists.

 

And then there was silence.

 

It was _deafening_ , and for a moment Bruce thought perhaps he really had gone deaf. But as he shifted his foot, he heard it catch on the rubble on the street and he sighed.

 

He glanced to his side. He could see Tony down the street, bent over the scepter like he was working on a particularly interesting engineering puzzle. Bruce raised a hand to his ear. “Clint?”

 

“ _What was that?_ ”

 

Bruce laughed. “The resonance frequency of an alien ship.” He managed to get to his feet. “Not sure if we can replicate it, though. That is apparently _also_ the resonance frequency of all the computers in Times Square _.”_

Clint grunted. “ _No new hostiles coming your way. You’ve got four minutes until EMP. Get your feet under you; we’ve got Thor up now._ ”

 

“Got it.”

 

Bruce stumbled towards where Tony was kneeling beside a building. He could see Tony muttering to himself over the scepter, which had stopped glowing, before setting it aside. Bruce started to open his mouth again and say something, probably a compliment or a kind word about Jarvis’ loss _again_ , but it died on his lips as Tony reached over and picked up his backpack. Tony had it open, looked inside, in the space of a breath.

 

Tony went still.

 

“It’s not—”

 

Tony reached into his pack and pulled out the small revolver Bruce had hidden there. Any protest Bruce had died as he held it up. Tony quirked an eyebrow at him in a pantomime of humor.

 

“Not what, Bruce?” Tony waggled the gun a little. “Here I am, thinking, oh, hey, resonance knocked out my repulsors. It’ll take a while for them to reboot. But that’s fine. My good buddy _Bruce_ always has an ace up his sleeve. He’ll have a weapon. Well look at that!” He waved the gun more wildly. “He _does_.”

 

“Tony, relax, it’s just a gun.”

 

“Just a gun?” Tony jerked himself to his feet. Bruce could seem shaking. “This isn’t _just_ a gun. If I look, is there one bullet missing? This is _the_ gun, Bruce!”

 

Bruce bit his lip. “I—He told you.”

 

“You told the whole ship, since it apparently doesn’t faze _you_ at all.” Tony was looking a little manic as he waved the gun around, and Bruce felt a spike of adrenaline at the thought that Tony might accidentally fire. “I _knew_ it, knew you were just the same as him. Always looking for a way out. A reason to fucking hate yourself.”

 

“Tony, we don’t have time for this.” He reached out to take the gun and Tony yanked away, looking at him incredulously. Bruce pressed on. “The city is under attack.”

 

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed!” He flailed his arm wide at the twisted metal destruction that had once been Times Square. “But, hey? Who cares! It’s not like it’s _my_ problem. I’m the one who was too bull-headed to stop existing, and here you are—” He gestured at Bruce with the gun. “—still carrying around your god-damned _suicide_ attempt like a trophy! Always need a way out, huh Bruce?”

 

The fire flared to life inside him, rough and hot and angry at Tony’s words. Bruce had to focus on his breathing as his eyesight swam green. His hand fell to his wrist and he palmed his watch, wondering fleetingly if he should take it off to prevent it from being ruined.

 

He hardly realized that Tony had stopped talking until the other man pitched forward into him. Bruce’s arms came up automatically half in self-defense, half in worry, to wrap around Tony’s shoulders and pull him into a tight hug.

 

Tony buried his face in his shoulder, and Bruce felt Tony’s beard against his neck as he struggled to breathe. He held on numbly as Tony had a minor breakdown in the ruins of Times Square.

 

“Christ, Bruce. Why am I fighting?”

 

Bruce relaxed a little. He ran his hand over Tony’s back, trying to soothe his quaking form. Tony smelled of fear and loss, and it started that slow, green burn inside Bruce again. It had never stopped, really. “It’s what we do,” he said after a moment. “When we don’t have a choice.”

 

Tony went still against him, just breathing. After a moment he stirred and pulled away. He didn’t look embarrassed, exactly, just confused. “I can’t lose it all again,” he said.

 

“So don’t.” Bruce shrugged one shoulder and offered Tony a wry smile.

 

Tony managed a smile back. His eyes were wet, the smell of loss and sadness heavy over him. He glanced away, up over Bruce’s head, to where the helicarrier still hovered.

 

Bruce looked, too, and it was just in time to see his handiwork.

 

A great shudder came over the ship. Bruce could see a small, red form flitting around the mouth of the wormhole, casting lighting all around. _Thor_ , he assumed, but he didn’t have time to contemplate it as the lights on the helicarrier winked out of existence and the entire thing began to fall.

 

He was in a daze, watching Thor dive down through a sea of enemies to catch the ship with one hand and try and slow its descent. It was marginally effective, with Thor driving it away from the largest buildings before it careened out of sight.

 

Bruce took a deep breath. And another. Because the portal hadn’t closed. It had grown bigger as the ship sunk, an enormous tear across the sky.

 

“They need the Hulk.” Bruce began to remove his bracers. He handed them to Tony, who took them numbly. Bruce took advantage of his post-freak-out dazed state. “Put these on. Your reactor will keep them powered enough to protect you.”

 

Tony obeyed wordlessly, connecting the wires to the bracers. Bruce looked at the blue circle in the man’s chest and had a single, gloriously happy moment to thank the universe that arc reactors didn’t resonate at the same frequency as alien ships.

 

“Vibranium,” Tony said, tapping the circle as if he knew.

 

Bruce smiled a little sadly to himself. He picked up his pack and handed it to Tony, watching the other man slip it over his shoulders as Bruce removed his watch.

 

“Keep this near you,” he said as he slipped the watch band around the strap of the backpack, fastening it securely.

 

Tony frowned back at him. “Bruce… your watch was destroyed in New Mexico.”

 

“Yeah.” Bruce trailed his hand over the watch’s face. He wanted to reach out and brush his hands over Tony’s chest, up his shoulder, cup his face and draw him in. But he didn’t. “It was destroyed.”

 

He took a step backwards, then another. He managed to glance away from the watch and up to Tony’s eyes. Tony was so confused, so helpless, that when Bruce turned and dashed down the street, the fire was already raging inside him.

 

He turned himself over to the Hulk, and fell into the licking flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So, did anyone notice the watch earlier?)


	27. Chapter 27

Natasha had been in fights. A lot of fights, in fact, but none as hectic as this one.

 

She spun around, taking out the nearest alien with its energy stick, and then ducked as four SHIELD agents fired all around her, covering her. The streets were a mess of flashing blue and grey and black as every SHIELD agent fought for their lives.

 

She heard the whine of an energy blast and she lashed out—too late to stop the explosion, but Captain America was there shoving her to the ground and covering them both with his shield. She took a breath in as the smoke settled and stood up, already firing again.

 

The voice in her ear told her they were fighting a losing battle.

 

*

 

Thor had fought many valiant foes, but none as dangerous as these great behemoths. They withstood all but the most powerful of blows from Mjolnir. He raised his hammer high above his head and called forth the lightning.

 

It spun around him, like a dance. All crackling energy and pain and he directed at the nearest beast with a shout, “For Midgard!”

 

It fell by his hand, and four more sprang from the depths of the portal. Thor gritted his teeth and raised Mjolnir again.

 

He would not lose against these foes.

 

*

 

The nearest thing to a fight Jane had ever been in had been on a street in New Mexico where she’d mostly run around with no clue what to do.

 

She flipped her hand over the console of the quinjet, sending it into a tight barrel-roll that sent aliens flying in all directions. They tried to cling to the body of the jet as it rolled, and Jane tried to cling to her lunch.

 

She heard Coulson give a desperate sigh of pain as the ship rolled, but she couldn’t look at him. She righted it again and fired, fired into the beasts on bikes and wished that they would all just go away.

 

She wasn’t sure she could survive this fight.

 

*

 

Clint had been in more battles than he could reasonably count, most of which in much the same position he found himself in now.

 

He perched atop the highest building and loosed an arrow into the nearest alien. He reached into his quiver and pulled forth the last arrow, already taking a running leap off the side. Falling bodily into a bike-riding alien, he stabbed it in the neck and kicked it off. He held his bow at the ready as he flew, thinking mostly _damn I’m badass_.

 

He flew high into the air, his view of the city improving with each foot he gained. He could see the huge tear in the sky, threatening to let the very stars fall upon the Earth. He could see the others fighting desperately for survival, and he directed comments at them to aid them. He saw SHIELD agents swarming the invaders time and time again, and it made him grin.

 

He wasn’t sure if they would win, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

 

*

 

Hulk was the strongest!

 

All fights were for the Hulk!

 

Hulk could destroy any monster. Especially the big-puny roaring monsters. He hit them with the anger puny Banner had held for them. The anger was on his skin and burning in the air, because he was the strongest!

 

Hulk could see the furthest. Hulk could see when terrible monsters fell from the sky. He could see puny Banner’s puny friends fighting as if they were also the Hulk. Hulk thought that was funny.

 

(Hulk didn’t think it was funny when puny Tony was attacked. He was only angry.)

 

*

 

Tony had been in enough battles to know when things were going south.

 

Evidence number one: he was hopelessly outnumbered. They were everywhere, all around him, pressing with their sticks of energy and their clicking.

 

Evidence number two: they didn’t get his jokes, which was seriously horrible because he had to make due with Clint’s occasional laughter in his ear.

 

Evidence number three: he was hopelessly outmatched. He’d sort of figured out Bruce’s bracers. It was enough to protect him, but he couldn’t throw them like Bruce could, or use them to increase the weight of his punch. His repulsors were fritzy, still, but getting better. The only other thing he had were the five bullets in the revolver, which he was loathe to use.

 

Evidence number four: Jarvis had stopped talking to him. He needed Jarvis like he needed air. Jarvis would tell him to strafe left. Jarvis would keep him from blowing his own head off. Jarvis was always there for him, but now he wasn’t. Jarvis was just a cold metal scepter in his hands.

 

Evidence number five: he was getting desperate.

 

Tony took a leap, his boots carrying him over the far block of stone as he tried to follow the Hulk’s path of destruction. He flew over the invader’s heads and landed, spinning, to slice through them with the dead scepter.

 

Then, they were on him and the only thing he could think to do was overload the reactor and take them down with him.

 

So, he did, in a crash of energy blue and white and green that sent cement everywhere and it was crushing him, squeezing him—

 

His head hit the ground with a crack.

 

(Tony knew he would win this fight. He had to. He had to be there so Bruce wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t lose anyone ever again.)

 

*

 

“Director, we have a big problem.”

 

Fury opened his eye and—just as suddenly as he had been knocked out—he was back on his feet. He glanced over at the single, tiny agent standing amidst a sea of dead or unconscious insurgents. He decided she would get a promotion. “Report.”

 

“There is a missile heading for the city.” She pointed over the wreckage on the bridge to where one screen still clung to life, helpfully tracing a little red blip across the earth.

 

Fury swore. He wanted to know who had authorized the launch so he could wring their neck, but he had to deal with the problem first.

 

“Hawkeye?” He asked his comm.

 

“Glad you’re all right, sir.”

 

“Won’t be for long. We’ve got a missile heading here. Inbound, four minutes, thirty-six seconds.” He went to the console, but knew there was no way to stop it with the power offline. “What have you got for me?”

 

He heard Hawkeye suck in a breath, but before he could answer another voice broke through.

 

“Give me a minute to climb out from under this wall and I’ll handle it,” Stark said.

 

“Stark, get off this line.” Fury raced his hands over the keyboard, but everything was down. The ship was dead metal on the ground. He couldn’t even muster a jet to uselessly throw at the missile. “We don’t have—”

 

An inhuman roar burst through the comm, so loud that Fury had to rip it from his ear. He shoved it back in just in time for Hawkeye’s absurd laugh to register.

 

“Sir, we’ve got the Hulk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of little strings pulling together in this chapter.


	28. Chapter 28

Tony struggled up, out, forward towards the light under a sea of water. He awoke so slowly that it hardly registered, until suddenly everything registered at once.

 

Fighting aliens. Talking in his ear. Legs crushed under a wall. Boots protecting him. Bruce’s shields protecting him. (And somewhere under all that, the vaguely uncomfortable feeling of Bruce’s pack digging into his back.)

 

“We’ve got a missile heading here. Inbound, four minutes, thirty-six seconds,” he heard Fury say over his comm. “What have you got for me?”

 

Some vague part of Tony registered that Fury wasn’t talking to him, but he answered anyway. “Give me a minute to climb out from under this wall and I’ll handle it.” He started to shift and brace his hand against the ruined concrete. He smacked his hand against his reactor and felt the repulsor snap to attention on his palm. If he could angle his repulsor right he could blast the wall, and he probably wouldn’t break his legs when it all came crumbling down…

 

“Stark, get off this line!” Fury barked at him. “We don’t have—”

 

The rest of Fury’s response was lost because suddenly, whoa, there was the Hulk punching through an alien Tony hadn’t even realized was there. Tony managed to turn enough to see the Hulk throwing aliens and bikes around like ragdolls before picking up a chunk of concrete and hurtling it towards the sky, knocking a bike out of the air.

 

“Sir,” he heard Clint say over the comm, laughing. “We’ve got the Hulk.”

 

Tony chose to ignore that comment. “Nice one, big guy!” he yelled instead. He switched off his comm, already running through the variables of how high he could fly with futzy repulsors and a missile in his arms.

 

The Hulk paused and huffed out a breath, turning to Tony with a look of confusion and concern. At least, on a human that’s what that look would have meant. Tony figured it was all the same. With the aliens gone, Hulk lumbered over to him and began to shift rocks around, unburying him.

 

“Hey, that’s sweet, thanks.” Tony wiggled around, feeling his boots straining under the weight of the heavy cement wall. Without them his feet would have already been powder. “Listen, can you dig a little faster? We’ve got a missile incoming and I need to throw it at some aliens.”

 

Hulk paused, which was the exact opposite of what Tony wanted. Slowly, he turned to look down at him. Tony was lost in his gaze, suddenly realizing that this was breathtaking rage issues incarnate, and that maybe he shouldn’t piss him off.

 

“You know. If you want.”

 

“Bomb?” Hulk asked, his voice a deep low rumble that had Tony gaping.

 

“Uh, yes. A bomb. It’s going to hit the city and a lot of people are going to be hurt. So can you dig me out so I can get rid of it?” He pointed up, at the tear still hanging in the sky.

 

He froze as Hulk wrapped a hand around his torso. He’d moved so quickly Tony hadn’t seen him do it. “Whoa there, big guy. Take it easy. Usually I’m down for a little manhandling, but I’m understandably preoccupied so how about we get back to the digging?”

 

Hulk just tipped him forward and snagged Bruce’s bag, yanking it off of him.

 

“Hey! That’s not yours. Or, maybe it is.” Tony watched as the Hulk ignored him, pulling the backpack over his hand like a bracelet. “It looks good on you. Great, even. We’ll start a whole line of backpack-bracelets right after we finish this. Look, Hulkie baby, I really do not have time. I need to take that missile off of earth right—”

 

Hulk leaned down, right into his personal space, his huge head a breath away as their eyes locked. For one split second Tony swore he saw brown there behind radioactive green, but it must have been a mistake.

 

“What’re you—”

 

Hulk let out another breath and his lip curled into a snarling smile. Then he rose and in one leap he was gone.

 

“Holy—that’s really far.” Tony watched as the Hulk leapt up the side of the nearest skyscraper—nearly forty stories at once. He jumped from building to building until Tony couldn’t see him anymore.

 

“Hail, Stark!” Tony tipped back to see Thor approaching him, his red cape billowing in the wind, one hand raised in greeting. “Do you still possess Loki’s scepter?”

 

“Yes! Thor, this is great. Dig me out of here.” He held up the scepter, burnt out and dead. “We’ve got a missile coming.”

 

“So your archer has informed me.” Thor tapped his ear and began to dig Tony out with short, quick movements. Tony had just a moment to wonder when Thor had gotten a communicator before he snapped back into himself.

 

“Oh, right.” Tony reached up and switched his comm back on.

 

“—amit Stark! Stop having a tea party with the _Hulk_ and get back out there.”

 

“Nice to hear from you too, Fury.” Tony ripped one leg out from under the rubble and then he and Thor strained to lift the rest. “There won’t be a ‘there’ if you don’t give me a chance to intercept the missile.”

 

“We’ve got someone on that.”

 

“Who?” Tony asked, but his words were ripped from his mouth as Thor snagged him around the waist and flew him into the air. He clung to Thor desperately as they rocketed towards the helicarrier. “Fury!” he shouted over the rush of air. “Who’s on missile duty?”

 

He got no answer. They landed heavily on the ruined helicarrier. Tony stumbled away from Thor and suddenly—hey!—there was Natasha ripping the scepter from his hands.

 

“Get ready to close it!” Steve barked, and Natasha stabbed the scepter into the shield of the whirling Tessearct device.

 

It was astonishing—beautiful and destructive in every sense of both words. The cube spun in the air, hanging from nothing between stark metal posts. Tony wanted to study it. He wanted to wrap his hands around it and find out what made it tick. He wanted to pry it apart and put it together again. He wanted to destroy it so that it could never hurt another life. His fingers itched, and then his mind caught up with what was happening.

 

“Wait! We’ve got a missile heading straight here.” He stuck out his hands to his side and activated his repulsors. “I’ve got—”

 

Thor reached out a hand and wrapped around his shirt, tugging him down and pressing him flat against the helicarrier. He heard Clint’s voice in his ear.

 

“Stark, Hulk’s on it.”

 

“ _What_?”

 

He looked up. He saw stars in a sky that should have been blue. He heard a roar in the distance, moving closer, and then there was the freaking _Hulk_ with a nuclear missile clutched in his hands like a struggling fish, Bruce’s backpack hanging off his wrist like the world’s most ridiculous fashion accessory, landing on the helicarrier and jumping _up_.

 

His jump was so fast, so powerful, that the helicarrier was shoved down, deeper into the crater in which it lay. Everyone stumbled to one side. He felt Thor trip over him and saw Natasha and Steve go flying. The Hulk jumped so far and so quickly there was an explosion of air, leaving only the smell of burning fuel in his wake.

 

He jumped straight up and into the wormhole.

 

“Oh, no.” Tony reached out his hand.

 

He saw the Hulk’s silhouette against yellow fire. He saw stars winking out behind the fireball as the missile went off behind the tear in the sky. He could see it expanding, and then Hulk disappeared.

 

He saw in the corner of his eye Natasha standing, stabbing the scepter through the shield again and heard Cap yell “Close it!”

 

She twisted her wrist.

 

“No, no, he has to fall. Gravity still affects him.” Tony wanted Foster there. She could tell him the statistics, the numbers, give him hope that Hulk would fall through that rapidly-closing wormhole. He lashed out at Thor and pushed the demi-god off.

 

Tony had his hands under him, repulsors firing, and was rocketing up, up towards the tear and towards Bruce but it was so small, just a few hundred yards, then a few dozen, then a few feet—but he was so close, he could reach out and touch it and find them both behind the veil if only he could move _faster_.

 

Then it was a pinprick in the sky and Bruce was gone.

 

Just. Gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will post the last chapter tomorrow.


	29. Chapter 29

_Six months later._

 

“How is she today, Jarvis?”

 

Tony swirled his bourbon as he waited for Jarvis to compile the news. He stared out over the dusty star-lit city, counting the cars that passed by.

 

“Ms. Potts has unfortunately lost the primary election. She has issued a statement which reaffirms her position, and her desire to run again next year.”

 

“Mm,” Tony hummed. He raised the tumbler to his lips and took a sip, savoring the taste. “Well, that’s too bad. I voted for her.”

 

“Indeed, sir.”

 

Tony frowned out the window. “And Rhodey?”

 

“There is no change in Colonel Rhodes’ status, sir. He remains in a level five coma in Washington D.C.”

 

“They haven’t moved him yet?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

Tony hummed again. He thought about taking another drink as he watched an empty wrapper flutter down the street, but he refrained. “And Happy?”

 

“Mr. Hogan continues to organize his post-retirement boxing match. He has just secured funding support from Hammer Industries in return for showcasing their new body armor. Mr. Hammer seems to believe that this will be good publicity for his company.”

 

Tony swore under his breath. “Are you kidding me? What are the chances?”

 

“I cannot calculate them, sir.”

 

He took another swig of his drink and glowered out the window. His hand tensed around his glass, but after a moment he relaxed. “And…Has anyone seen him?”

 

“There is no evidence that Dr. Banner is anywhere on Earth, nor has Thor indicated his discovery in another realm.”

 

Tony downed the rest of his bourbon and went for a refill.

 

He stood behind his bar and looked out over his living room as he poured a generous helping. The room was tiny, furnished with what SHIELD had deigned to give him. As an un-person he had no access to labs and equipment. He couldn’t patent anything he made, couldn’t ever make a cent to dig himself out of this hole. He took a long sip of his drink and tried to make sense of it all.

 

“This is weird, right Jarvis?”

 

“Sir?”

 

Tony sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, then over his beard. He’d let it grow out. There was no point in keeping up appearances when there wasn’t any Tony Stark. “It’s weird that I’m following these people who have never met me.”

 

Jarvis paused. To an outsider, it would appear the AI was calculating. To Tony, it was a thoughtful pause. “Everything I report is on record. They are not hiding from you.”

 

“No,” Tony said, swirling his drink. “They aren’t. Still weird, though.”

 

“You’ve never been normal.”

 

Tony whirled around in shock and nearly tripped over his own feet at the sound. He thought he was hallucinating, but he couldn’t be. He asked anyway.

 

“Jarvis, am I hallucinating?”

 

“No, sir.” Jarvis sounded pleased. “That is indeed Dr. Banner.”

 

Bruce seemed almost nervous, standing there in the doorframe to Tony’s living room. He wrung his hands at his waist and glanced around, his eyes falling on Jarvis’ cameras strewn around the walls. “Sorry I’m late.”

 

“Bruce,” Tony said, and then he couldn’t think of anything else. He stared at Bruce—Bruce Banner who was _dead_ , who had rode the Hulk into a wormhole and not come out the other side, but who was standing in his living room like it was any other Tuesday. Tony suddenly realized he was still holding his drink and he turned and threw it against the wall.

 

“Sorry!” Tony said, his voice sounding sharp and high in his own ears. “You don’t like alcohol. Read that in your file. Other you’s file. Whatever. He doesn’t like it, you probably don’t. Won’t drink anymore.” Bruce winced and smiled again, and Tony babbled on. “So, I figured, you know, I’d throw that out. I don’t need it. I was just having a night cap. Well, not ‘Cap’ because he won’t talk to me, but _cap_ because cap. Wow, you should have called ahead. I would have cleaned up.” He gestured weakly at the bourbon leaking down the wall. “The place is a mess.”

 

“Tony, it’s okay.” Bruce stepped forward, and Tony couldn’t take it anymore.

 

He jumped, arms reaching up, and they crashed together in a tight hug. Tony could feel Bruce’s arms around him, Bruce’s bones standing at attention beneath his skin ( _too thin_ , Tony thought, _but alive, alive!)_. He pulled Bruce flush against him and buried his face in the other man’s neck, not caring that he was crying because Bruce was _alive_.

 

“You’re not dead,” he whispered into Bruce’s shoulder.

 

Bruce held him, one hand on Tony’s neck, the other on the small of his back. “No, I’m not.” He laughed and it rumbled through Tony like an echo of happiness. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“You asshole,” Tony said, but he didn’t let go. He crushed closer until all he could do was smell Bruce’s travels on his skin. “You jumped into a wormhole.”

 

“Ah, yeah, not one of my best ideas.” He hummed and turned so that his lips pressed against Tony’s neck, and Tony let out another broken sigh. “Glad the other guy went for it, though. He wanted to keep you safe as much as I did.”

 

“You did a really damned good job of it, Banner.” Tony tried to press closer, but there was no way to get there. They were as close as possible and it would all be okay.

 

Then Bruce started to pull away and Tony growled, locking his arms around him. “No way. You aren’t leaving again.”

 

Bruce sighed, but didn’t argue. He just wrapped them together more tightly. “Tony, I don’t have much time. I’ve got maybe ten more minutes before they get suspicious.” He ran a hand through Tony’s hair, just a light touch. “But I’ll stay until then.”

 

Tony nodded against Bruce’s shoulder, desperate. “How—how did you survive?”

 

“Well, I have a lot more evidence to the theory that the Hulk can truly live through anything.” He pulled away a little, leaving on hand on Tony’s back, and Tony let him do it. Bruce raised his other arm and spun his wrist, letting his watch catch the dim light. “This brought me back to earth.”

 

Tony looked at the watch for a long moment, then back to Bruce’s face just an inch from his own. Bruce had a wry smile as he waited for Tony to put it together. And just like that, it clicked.

 

“It _was_ a teleporter! I knew it!” Tony grabbed his shoulders and shook him a little gleefully. “Ha, yes, I am the best—but you’re a close second, since you invented it—but still, all me. Let it never be said that Tony Stark didn’t know something.”

 

Bruce smiled at him fondly. “It’s programed to teleport back automatically if I don’t reset the mechanism after thirty-six hours.”

 

Tony opened his mouth to ask something about the mechanism, already set to dive into a discussion about engineering, but then, “Wait. Thirty-six hours? Hulk was in the vacuum of space for that long? And you were him for that long?”

 

“Well…” Bruce trailed off, a little uncomfortable. He dropped his hands and Tony let him step away. “I was him for…a bit longer, I think. I’m… I woke up from him twenty days ago.”

 

Tony stared. He stared and stared at the thin, tiny Bruce in front of him who was so alive, but only just barely. At the Bruce who was risking re-exposure to let Tony know that he was still breathing. At the Bruce who was a damned genius who could pull of anything.

 

And then he stepped forward and yanked Bruce into a kiss.

 

Bruce made a startled noise before folding into him, his arms coming back up to draw them both close together. Tony threw his arms around Bruce’s neck and let his eyes fall shut, just feeling and knowing that _Bruce was alive!_

 

He would never get tired of that knowledge.

 

The kiss was so warm and desperate and sweet and Tony wanted to put everything he had into it. Every moment when he’d trusted Bruce, and Bruce had trusted him, and they had been the only ones to trust each other. He wanted to convey that losing Bruce had been losing everything. Losing everything all over again until he could only stand in the rubble of his life and look up.

 

But getting him back was getting everything back, and it was _perfect_.

 

They kissed until Tony wanted to climb inside of him and never leave. Bruce kissed him like he was hungry, like he’d been starved of everything for so long that he didn’t even remember the taste of joy. He kissed like Tony was all he could ever need, and it made Tony’s knees quake.

 

Then Bruce pulled back, his lips pink and his eyes hazy and said, “Sorry, sorry.” He was still holding Tony and Tony was close enough to press another kiss to his lips and they were lost again for a moment.

 

“Nnno, sorry.” Bruce pulled away again. “I can’t, uh, the other, uh. I only have three more minutes before SHIELD gets suspicious.”

 

“Okay.” Tony wrapped his hand in Bruce’s hair and fitted their lips together and for a long time they were one. “Where are we going?”

 

“What?” Bruce blinked a little, confused. Tony could see well enough that Bruce wanted to get back to the kissing right now, thank you, but he held back.

 

“Where are we going?” Tony pulled away and went to the bar. He threw open the drawer and revealed a panel of lights. He could feel Bruce staring at him as he ripped a series of computer chips from it.

 

“What is…?”

 

“Jarvis,” Tony said, waggling the chips around. He slipped them into his pocket and stepped back into Bruce’s space, placing his hands on Bruce’s hips. “Now, Dr. Banner. Where is your miracle device taking us?”

 

Bruce seemed confused for a moment, and then a slow smile started. It spread across his face and Tony couldn’t resist kissing him for it. “Marigaon?”

 

“Never heard of it,” Tony said with a smile. “Sounds perfect.”  


Bruce raised a hand, spreading broad fingers across Tony’s cheek. “Tony, it might not be what you—”

 

“Shut up.” Tony kissed him into silence. Bruce let out a little sigh, happy to oblige. “Whatever it is will be perfect.”

 

Bruce gave him another little smile, his eyes bright and searching as he ran his thumb over Tony’s cheekbone. “Okay,” he said after a long time staring. He let out a little rumbling laugh. “I wonder when I started falling for you, Stark. I thought it was in Times Square, but maybe it started with a handshake.”

 

“Definitely the handshake for me.” Tony smirked.

 

“Which one? Mine or…?”

 

“Yes,” and Tony kissed him again.

 

Tony’s eyes were closed, just feeling Bruce along his body as they pressed together. He felt Bruce raise his arm, heard the tiny _beep_ of his watch and they shuddered out of existence together in a burst of warm, blue-green light.

 

And they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened during those six months? Is Adenil actually giving you a happy ending? What will happen now that Bruce and Tony have found each other? What about Loki's voice in Natasha's ear, Steve's recovery, and the Winter Soldier? The sequel has the answers you seek.


End file.
